Group 2 did our paper on how local government can increase civic participation in the community.

Getting citizens active in civic affairs has been a challenge for many years. Many Americans born into citizenship take the liberal approach to the definition of what it  means to be a citizen. Namely, that citizenship is simply a bestowal of rights and liberties. However, the original republican definition of a citizen was self-government or participative governance. Republican citizenship was seen as duty based and forms the backbone for seeking greater civic participation in our communities. Our research looked into how technology can play a role in increasing this civic duty to participate in government and the community.

We began by looking at virtual town hall meetings. Virtual town hall meetings have a number of advantages over traditional meetings in physical space in that there are little facility/space, safety, and time constraints. “Meetings” can last for an indefinite amount of time allowing for greater participation from people who either can or could not attend a physical meeting (e.g. the disabled, elderly, families, etc).

Virtual town hall meetings also allow for a more egalitarian and collective approach to participation and problem solving. Architecture and code for these virtual meetings can be constructed such that each person can contribute their voice to the whole and the information gathered can be easily processed by council members for later consideration.

Another way to increase communication and participation is through social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. The City of Chandler maintains and is active in both Facebook and Twitter. This has allowed them to engage the community of Chandler in decision making and information distribution. Informal communication is something that was generally not seen very often between government and citizens but as the City of Chandler reports (through personal interviews with one of our group members), social networking sites has permitted this type of highly effective and social capital bridging method of communication.

Finally, e-voting system are another way that technology is engaging citizens. Much recent speculation and research has suggested that the digital revolution and our networked world has the potential to usher in a new ear of e-democracy and even a potential return to direct democracy. While e-voting systems make the job of managing vote counts easier, they also bring the potential for completely online voting systems in the future. Withdrawal from the physical requirements of poll voting, like virtual town halls, allow for a greater number of people to become active civic participants despite our increasingly busy lives. The advent of Internet based e-democracy and possible direct democracy are world changing possibilities and the our position as academics in this evolution of human government is exciting indeed.

Technology has the potential for great good and great evil. But implemented inline with fundamental ideals like the regulation influences outlined by Lessig and backed by normative and scholarly debate by individuals like ourselves, it is exciting to think about the potential that Internet technologies can bring to a new page in greater civic participation.