Skip to main content
Download book PDF
View expanded cover

International Conference on Electronic Participation

ePart 2014: Electronic Participation pp 13–25Cite as

Leveraging European Union Policy Community through Advanced Exploitation of Social Media

  • Conference paper

Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNISA,volume 8654)

Abstract

The first generations of social media exploitation by government were oriented towards the general public. Evaluations of them have shown that they can provide some insights into the perceptions of the general public, however in order to achieve the required higher levels of quality, depth and elaboration it is necessary to target specific communities having strong interest and good knowledge on the particular topic under discussion. The research presented in this paper makes a contribution in this direction. It develops a novel approach to social media exploitation by the European Union (EU), which aims at leveraging its policy community, which consists of a big network of individuals/policy stakeholders having various policy related roles and capacities, geographically dispersed all over Europe. Its theoretical foundation is policy networks theory. Based on a series of workshops, in which a large number of such individuals participated, the structure of the EU policy community is initially analysed, then the proposed approach is formulated and elaborated, and finally the fuctional architecture of an ICT platform for supporting it is designed. Their main pillars are: important policy stakeholders’ profiles and reputation management, relevant documents’ repository and relevance rating, and finally advanced visualized presentation of them.

Keywords

  • Web 2.0
  • social media
  • government
  • policy community
  • policy network
  • reputation management

Download conference paper PDF

References

  1. Bertot, J.C., Jaeger, P.T., Grimes, J.M.: Promoting transparency and accountability through ICTs, social media, and collaborative e-government. Transforming Government: People, Processand Policy 6(1), 78–91 (2012)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  2. Bonsón, E., Torres, L., Royo, S., Flores, F.: Local e-government 2.0: Social media and corporate transparency in municipalities. Government Information Quarterly 29, 123–132 (2012)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  3. Chun, S.A., Luna Reyes, L.F.: Editorial - Social media in government. Government Information Quarterly 29, 441–445 (2012)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  4. Margo, M.J.: A Review of Social Media Use in E-Government. Administrative Sciences 2(2), 148–161 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Criado, J.I., Sandoval-Almazan, R., Gil-Garcia, J.R.: Government innovation through social media. Government Information Quarterly 30, 319–326 (2013)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  6. Charalabidis, Y., Loukis, E.: Participative Public Policy Making Through Multiple Social Media Platforms Utilization. International Journal of Electronic Government Research 8(3), 78–97 (2012)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  7. Ferro, E., Loukis, E., Charalabidis, Y., Osella, M.: Policy Making 2.0: From Theory to Practice. Government Information Quarterly 30(4), 359–368 (2013)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  8. Ferro, E., Loukis, E., Charalabidis, Y., Osella, M.: Analyzing the Centralised Use of Multiple Social Media by Government from Innovations Diffusion Theory Perspective. In: Wimmer, M.A., Tambouris, E., Macintosh, A. (eds.) ePart 2013. LNCS, vol. 8075, pp. 95–108. Springer, Heidelberg (2013)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  9. Wandhöfer, T., Taylor, S., Alani, H., Joshi, S., Sizov, S., Walland, P., Thamm, M., Bleier, A., Mutschke, P.: Engaging Politicians with Citizens on Social Networking Sites: The WeGov Toolbox. International Journal of Electronic Government Research 8(3), 22–43 (2012)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  10. Bekkers, V., Edwards, A., de Kool, D.: Social media monitoring: Responsive governance in the shadow of surveillance? Government Information Quarterly 30(4), 335–342 (2013)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  11. Charalabidis, Y., Loukis, E., Androutsopoulou, A., Karkaletsis, V., Triantafillou, A.: Passive Crowdsourcing in Government Using Social Media. Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy 8(2) (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Loukis, E., Charalabidis, Y., Androutsopoulou, A.: An Analysis of Multiple Social Media Consultations in the European Parliament from a Public Policy Persepctive. In: European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), Tel Aviv, Israel (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Xenakis, A., Androutsopoulou, A., Koutras, C., Charalabidis, Y., Loukis, E.: Description of the NOMAD Evaluation Methodology – Deliverable 7.3 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Chryssochoou, D.: Democracy and the European polity. In: Cini, M. (ed.) European Union Politics, 2nd edn., Oxford University Press, Oxford (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Tapscott, D.: Government 2.0: Rethinking Government and Democracy for the Digital Age. In: Gøtze, J., Pedersen, C.B. (eds.) State of the eUnion - Government 2.0 and Onwards. AuthorHouse, Copenhagen (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Skogstad, G.: Policy Networks and Policy Communities: Conceptual Evolution and Governing Realities. In: Workshop on “Canada’s Contribution to Comparative Theorizing” Annual Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Rhodes, R.A.W.: Policy Network Analysis. In: Moran, M., Rein, M., Goodin, R.E. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy, pp. 423–445. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Rhodes, R.A.W.: Understanding Governance: Ten Years On. Organization Studies 28(8), 1243–1264 (2007)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  19. Pfetsch, F.R.: Negotiating the European Union: A Negotiation-Network Approach. International Negotiation 3, 293–317 (1998)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  20. Ansell, C.: The Networked Polity: Regional Development in Western Europe. Governance 13(3), 303–333 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Peterson, J.: The choice for EU theorists: Establishing a common framework for analysis. European Journal of Political Research 39, 289–318 (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Atkinson, M., Coleman, W.: Strong States and Weak States: Sectoral Policy Networks in Advanced Capitalist Economies. British Journal of Political Science 19, 47–67 (1989)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  23. Coleman, W., Skogstad, G. (eds.): Policy Communities and Public Policy in Canada. Copp Clark Pitman, Toronto (1990)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Van Waarden, F.: Dimensions and types of policy networks. European Journal of Political Research 21, 29–52 (1992)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  25. Marsh, D., Smith, M.: Understanding Policy Networks: towards a Dialectical Approach. Political Studies 48, 4–21 (2000)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  26. Howlett, M.: Do Networks Matter? Linking Policy Network Structure to Policy Outcome: Evidence from Four Canadian Policy Sectors 1990-2000. Canadian Journal of Political Science 35(2), 235–267 (2002)

    CrossRef  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  27. Atkinson, M.M., William, D.: Policy Networks, Policy Communities and the Problems of Governance. Governance 5(2), 154–180 (1992)

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  28. Li, H., Benyoucef, M., Bochmann, G.V.: Towards a global online reputation. In: The Proceedings of the International Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Keim, D.A., Kohlhammer, J., Ellis, G.P., Mansmann, F.: Mastering The Information Age – Solving Problems with Visual Analytics. Eurographics, Germany (2010)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. Information and Communication Systems Engineering, University of the Aegean, Samos, Greece

    Yannis Charapabidis, Euripidis Loukis & Yannis Koulizakis

  2. EurActiv.com, Brussels, Belgium

    David Mekkaoui

  3. Intrasoft International, Luxembourg

    Antonis Ramfos

Authors
  1. Yannis Charapabidis
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Euripidis Loukis
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Yannis Koulizakis
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. David Mekkaoui
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Antonis Ramfos
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Applied Informatics Department, University of Macedonia, Egnatia Street 156, 54636, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Efthimios Tambouris

  2. Institute of Communications Studies, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT, Leeds, UK

    Ann Macintosh

  3. School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

    Frank Bannister

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

Copyright information

© 2014 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing

About this paper

Cite this paper

Charapabidis, Y., Loukis, E., Koulizakis, Y., Mekkaoui, D., Ramfos, A. (2014). Leveraging European Union Policy Community through Advanced Exploitation of Social Media. In: Tambouris, E., Macintosh, A., Bannister, F. (eds) Electronic Participation. ePart 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8654. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44914-1_2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44914-1_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-662-44913-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-662-44914-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)