Non-Technical Aspects
of Citizens Engagement
in e-Government
Wojciech Cellary
Department of Information Technology
Poznan University of Economics
Mansfelda 4
60-854 Poznań, POLAND
cellary@kti.ue.poznan.pl
www.kti.ue.poznan.pl
(c) W. Cellary 2010 slide 1
Government
 A government is required to find solutions to
problems of a certain community
 Classical notion of a “community” is related with
a territory
 A territorial community shares some common
values, however, it is not homogeneous in all the
aspects
 A community is a result of communication
 Smaller

(c)
territory, easier, more frequent and richer
(multi-aspect) interpersonal communication
More frequent communication, stronger relationships
W. Cellary 2010, slide 2
Internet
Internet changed the communication,
so changed communities too
 Features of Internet communication:
 everybody may publish his/her own information, including




comments to information published by others
information is available everywhere
information is available forever – asynchronous
communication
information may be individually searched
information leads to people interested in this information
Internet facilitates creation of
„content communities”
(c)
W. Cellary 2010, slide 3
Communities
Territorial communities
Content communities
Communities being
a consequence of
living together
on a common territory
Communities being
a consequence of
the interest
in common content
Those consequences are not the same
(c)
W. Cellary 2010, slide 4
Relationships
Territorial communities











(c)
multi-aspect relationships
transitivity
identity
known past
emerging authorities
following leader’s views
(knowledge or trust)
hierarchical structure
difficulty in leaving a territory
common interest and common
threats (long-term)
aiming at compromise
view unification
W. Cellary 2010, slide 5
Content communities






single aspect relationships
non-transitivity
anonymity
hidden past
everyone is authority for himself
manifestation of distinctness
 equality
 easy leaving a community
 common interests (short-term)
 keeping own opinions
 keeping view diversity
Content communities
 The content communities on the Internet allow their members to
learn about a variety of views and opinions from different
perspectives
 Content communities serve rather to exhibit people’s own opinions
acquired elsewhere than to accept opinions of others or to unify
opinions
 Anonymity of the content community members leads to the lack of
responsibility for one’s words
 unlimited possibility of changing opinions and positions,
 a possibility to present contradictory opinions by the same person

using different nicknames
Single-aspect relationships conduct to the radicalization of
opinions on a given subject
 unconsidered contexts
 unconsidered multiple aspects of a problem
 Lack of social pressure
 no drivers to achieve a consensus
 Lack of the hierarchy
 a word of a fool equal to a word of a sage
(c)
W. Cellary 2010, slide 6
Citizen’s engagement
 Citizen’s engagement is required to:
1.
Elect a government
2.
Guide the government how to solve problems
 During government election



content communities (which are single-aspect) aim at convincing
many voters
each voter decides on behalf of him/herself
the result of many votes is a single government
 During guiding the government how to solve
a problem


(c)
content communities (which are single-aspect) aim at
convincing a single government
the result of government decision influence the whole territorial
community only partially represented by content communities
W. Cellary 2010, slide 7
Conclusions
When talking about
citizen’s engagement via Internet,
it is necessary to take into account
characteristics of content communities
 content communities does not represent the
whole territorial community
 content communities easier represent negative
opinions than the positive ones
(c)
W. Cellary 2010, slide 8
Conclusions
Content communities may provide a government
with a variety of partial views,
but cannot exempt a government
from a harmonized solution
for the benefit of the whole territorial community
(c)
W. Cellary 2010, slide 9
Thank you
Wojciech Cellary
(c)
W. Cellary 2010, slide 10