Electronic Participation First International Conference, ePart 2009 Linz, Austria, August 31–September 4, 2009 Proceedings

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First International Conference on eParticipation, ePart 2009 held in Linz, Austria in August/September 2009.

The 16 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers consider future multi-disciplinary research direction, examine the potential contribution of social networking sites to political engagement, provide evaluation frameworks for both eParticipation policy and specific projects, and those that describe emerging tools and techniques with which to conduct and analyse eParticipation.

Research Review and Outlook.- eParticipation: The Research Gaps.- ICT Is Not Participation Is Not Democracy – eParticipation Development Models Revisited.- Public Policies on eParticipation in Austria.- A Tale of Six Countries: eParticipation Research from an Administration and Political Perspective.- The Role of Social Networking Services in eParticipation.- eParticipation for Political Education: Challenges and Opportunities.- Evaluation and Assessment.- Evaluating eParticipation Sophistication of Regional Authorities Websites: The Case of Greece and Spain.- Enacting e-Participation Tools: Assemblages in the Stream of Life.- DoIT Right: Measuring Effectiveness of Different eConsultation Designs.- The Use of Facebook in National Election Campaigns: Politics as Usual?.- Fostering e-Participation at the Urban Level: Outcomes from a Large Field Experiment.- Tools, Techniques and Case Studies.- Using Argument Visualization to Enhance e-Participation in the Legislation Formation Process.- Automated Analysis of e-Participation Data by Utilizing Associative Networks, Spreading Activation and Unsupervised Learning.- Enabling eParticipation of the Youth in the Public Debate on Legislation in Austria: A Critical Reflection.- eParticipation for Adolescent Citizens (in Austria).- Democracy to Come: Active Forums as Indicator Suites for e-Participation and e-Governance.