Overview

The research community is involved in many efforts to understand political participation in the Internet age and the different ways the public institutions and citizens exploit ICTs to broaden and deepen participation in the political decision making process. DEMO-net – the e-participation network of excellence funded by the European Commision (www.demo-net.org) - carried out a preliminary survey with this research community to identify the key issues in this growing and multifaceted research field.

E-participation has increasingly become an object of specific public policies, at different territorial level, adopting different perspectives and priorities. Moreover, the commitment of political actors is apparently one of the prominent elements determining models and results of public e-participation initiatives put into practice. Therefore Demo-Net proposes a workshop devoted to the discussion of these issues, paying attention to the relationships among public policy contexts/features, e-participation models, effects of e-participation on the public decision making. It is also to be noted that the field of public policies related to e-participation shows a strong inter-sectorial profile itself (e.g. dealing with technological infrastructure and its governance, e-government, institutional and decision making reforms, digital divide and education policies, communication sector governance, etc.).

Those researchers working on these topics are invited at the Demo-Net workshop to discuss their views on the development of this research field, sharing their approaches and findings.
Objectives

The Demo_Net workshop has the following objectives:

•  to facilitate close and sustainable cooperation between researchers from different academic disciplines to better understand the field of public policies dealing with e-participation and its conditions
•  to identify research challenges and how to tackle
•  to develop schemes for comparative researchs
•  to develop schemes for interdisciplinary researchs

Submissions

The workshop will combine short presentations of white papers with co-operative discussion. Authors must submit a 2-4-page white paper for presentation at the workshop to the workshop organiser (anna.freschi@unibg.it)

White papers should sketch what they believe to be the key research challenges - in the field of the analisys on eParticipation public policies and implications for public decision making - in a brief form using the conventions of scientific writing, such as abstracts, literature references and logical argument, and may be regarded as prototypes for future development into full papers. Authors may be asked to revise their white paper. The final papers will be published as a workshop brochure. Co-operation and further development of the workshop papers for submission to conferences and journals will be facilitated. Funding for travel and subsistence may be available from Demo-net in cases where funding is not available from conventional sources.
Program Committee

Stephen Coleman, University of Leeds
Anna Carola Freschi, University of Bergamo