Participation is today central to many kinds of research and design practice in information studies and beyond. From user-generated content to crowdsourcing to peer production to fan fiction to citizen science, the concept remains both unexamined and heterogeneous in its definition. Intuitions about participation are confirmed by some examples, but scandalized by others, and it is difficult to ...

Increased citizen-to-citizen discussion and deliberation is an important potential of digital government initiatives. This paper presents findings from a longitudinal study of such outcomes using household survey data, focus groups and one-on-one interviews from a mature community network the Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV) in Blacksburg, Virginia, and surrounding Montgomery County. It addr...

Reviewing the literature on political participation and civic engagement, the article offers a critical examination of different conceptual frameworks. Drawing on previous definitions and operationalisations, a new typology for political participation and civic engagement is developed, highlighting the multidimensionality of both concepts. In particular, it makes a clear distinction between man...

The trend towards more user contributions on the web and an increased interest in social media technology, from both governments and citizens, leads to new potentials and challenges in designing for citizen-government interactions. For several years now, governments have recognised the potential of the web 2.0 to bring citizens and their governments closer together. Indeed, the social web holds...

over the past decades, participatory approaches to development have been the center of attention not only as a means to sustainable development but also as an end. although women's role in rural development is emphasized, their participation in extension educational programs is nevertheless limited. using sherry aronstein theoretical framework, the descriptive-survey research aims to deter...

Online citizen science [Silvertown 2009] can be seen as a form of collective intelligence Lévy [1997] and Woolley et al. [2010] in which the wisdom of the crowd is applied to the Web to advance scientific knowledge [Prestopnik and Crowston 2012] Thus far, online citizen science projects [Bonney et al. 2009; Gray et al. 2012] have applied millions of volunteers to solving problems in a wide arra...

The recent development of Web 2.0, cloud computing and its related technologies are contributing towards the tendency to utilize mobile services and e-participation through Web 2.0. It offers users the ability to have greater control of information flow in public spaces, making active participation highly possible. Citizens are empowered in the sense that they control the process of interaction...

Purpose – This paper seeks to promote an understanding of gender effects on retirement plan participation as a function of fund assortment size. Design/methodology/approach – A decision simulation was conducted among 349 US adults whose task was to invest in a hypothetical 401(k) retirement plan. The number of mutual funds offered for investment was varied and the effects on the incidence and e...

This study offers new evidence on the effects of the matching contributions made by employers to 401(k) plan accounts on plan participation rates, exploiting microdata from the National Compensation Survey, a large, nationally representative, establishment dataset. It addresses the potential endogeneity of the matching contributions by employing coworker and labor market characteristics as inst...

Examining the extent to which a community plays a role in the decision-making process in tourism planning can provide a better understanding of how tourism can benefit a community. Arnstein’s ladder of citizen participation (ALCP) has been adopted by tourism scholars to understand both the nature of the participation expected of the community and the community’s actual participation in tourism ...