Democratic Decision-making In The Infomration Society: Exploring Stakeholders' VIEWS

Exploiting the relationship between democratic decision-making and the underlying technical infrastructure of the Information Society raises important issues of how various stakeholders perceive potential innovations and the role of technology in political activities. The connection between people, technology and politics is a concept usually referred to as eDemocracy. Its practices span from systems developed within the sphere of eGovernment to non-institutional initiatives which emerge through experience and mobilize political expression using ad hoc online means, such as blogs and social networking groups. This paper identifies this diversity and discusses explanatory findings on different perceptions of key stakeholders, examining how the concept of democracy as an online activity is compatible with their experiences and interests. At the next step, it suggests that research should compare and evaluate these diverse practices by importing concepts of stakeholder thinking. The outcome of this research would provide important added value into exploring and balancing different opinions and objectives towards sustainable development of the eDemocracy agenda within Information Society’s policies. We present our ideas by examining the case of a system which has drawn much attention during the last years: the UK Prime Minister’s ePetitions.