Exploring How the Appreciative Inquiry Model can Vitalize the Online Citizen Debate
Elena Sánchez‐Nielsen and Carolina Martín‐Vázquez Dpto. E. I. O. y Computación, Universidad de La Laguna, Spain enielsen @ ull. es cmartinv @ ull. es
Abstract: The success of e‐participation depends on citizens’ active involvement. However, citizens’ active engagement is a complex issue affected by many different barriers such as individual, structural, cultural, and political constraints, and the perceived ease of using technology. The aim of this paper is to investigate how the Appreciative Inquiry( AI) model can be used in the context of e‐participation to formulate appreciative inquiries, promote constructive dialogues, and vitalize the active engagement of citizens in online debates on policy‐making processes in two local municipalities. This methodology has been applied in the European project“ Puzzled by Policy: Helping you be part of EU”, which provides a unique platform for users to learn and discuss policy at EU and national levels, while finding out what particular policies mean to them both nationally and locally, so that they can contribute to policy drafting. The qualitative findings suggest that the appreciative inquiry model has the potential to foster social participation and promote constructive narratives to encourage proposals on the policy‐making process in local municipalities. In addition, the findings indicate that the online debates facilitated from an appreciative viewpoint by mediators are able to promote more interaction and participation compared with those not formulated from this viewpoint. As a result, appreciative questions elicit a more proactive and internalist type of discourse and, at the same time, one more focused on solutions.
Keywords: e‐participation, online citizen debate, appreciative inquiry model, immigration
1. Introduction
The aim of e‐participation is to use ICT to enhance and deepen political participation among citizens( Macintosh 2006). A high level of interaction between citizens and decision makers can strengthen the policymaking process and allow new forms of collaboration and ways of working to create more informed and effective policies( Schlosber et al 2007). Online citizens’ debates play an essential role in e‐participation to disseminate and strengthen policy‐making. One of the main benefits of online citizen debate is its flexibility in terms of time and location, as well as the choices made available to the participants( Price 2006). Although a growing body of literature has been devoted to the main benefits and opportunities that online citizen debate can offer, little is known about the driving forces that would foster citizens’ active engagement. Specifically, different challenges need to be addressed in order to enhance and vitalize citizens’ active participation in online debates through e‐participation initiatives. These challenges refer to the perceived ease of using technology, individual and social constraints to online participation, apathy, structural constraints to online participation in terms of marginalizing minorities or alternative perspectives, and overcoming constraints to political participation.
The appreciative inquiry( AI) model is a relatively new, but increasingly popular, organizational development approach for creating positive organizational change. This model seeks to identify the best in individuals and organizations through a model of inquiry and discovery, creating motivation and engagement by participants to make change in organizations( Cooperrider 2005). This AI positive model has been successfully applied in offline contexts such as in organizational, community and educational situations.
The aim of this paper is to investigate how the Appreciative Inquiry( AI) model can be used in the context of e‐ participation to formulate appreciative inquiries through the inquiry concept, promote constructive dialogues, and vitalize the active engagement of citizens in online debates on decision‐making processes in two local municipalities through the discovery concept.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the scenario that is used to apply the methodology. This scenario corresponds to the European project“ Puzzled by Policy: Helping you be part of EU”, in which the theoretical rationale, background and need for using the AI model as a methodology to foster social and constructive dialogue in the context of the Spanish pilot is described. Section 3 provides the quantitative and qualitative findings of the research using this AI methodology. Section 4 gives the concluding remarks.
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