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Papel y lápiz (Paper and pencil) is the result of a qualitative research project carried out using the Participatory Action Research (PAR) as a model. Papel y lapiz seeks to teach young people and children, who are identified as being at high social risk, in 35 different public educational institutions (PEIs) from Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. The principle aim of the project will be educating them about the importance of knowing and understanding the often-harsh realities of their social situations with particular focus on the social risks each of them might encounter. Papel y lapiz also aims to teach students about the social situation of their city using media and specifically the press. Working alongside Educommunication, the aim is to start educating the young people in school classrooms, in other words the most formative years of their youth. Between 2019 and 2022 this research project has reached 712 students from various public Educational Institutions (EIs) in Cartagena. The project was materialized in collaboration with teachers and directors by creating 6 educational cards that incorporate the use of the press to analyze some of the most critical issues the city is facing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the contemporary digital society, e-government is one of the most rapidly evolving service domain. Many governments in developed and developing countries in the world have created egovernment initiatives. Many authors, have been developed, different maturity models in order to better understand e-government evolution, and to assess or rank e-government portals. This paper aims to present e-government maturity models, and to identify their similarities and differences, as well as their weaknesses and strengths. This study examined the status of e-government in BiH and also conducted an in-depth literature review on e-government maturity models. Findings of our research show that the features included in those models differ from one to another. While some maturity models ignoring some features, it seems that others are just covering them and introducing new ones. Reviewing the status of e-government in BiH, showing that BIH has a solid ICT infrastructure, but there is a lack of political agreement on the further e-government development. Insufficient, not harmonized and not adopted legislation are slowing down development of egovernment in BiH. The contribution of this paper is in simplifying work for researchers when choosing the right maturity model and to help BIH state government leaders in understanding egovernment processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Election systems in modern democracies are continuously remodeled and adjusted to meet the needs of societal changes. One of the recent issues regarding elections, attracting the attention of comparative politics 'concerns' the mechanisms countries adopt in order to allow the nationals of countries' who have moved out of the country to be able to vote. The topic raises various, often opposed opinions on the manner in which this right ought to be accomplished, the type of elections on which ex-patriots would be able to vote (such as national elections, presidential elections and referendums), the number of seats reserved for the representation of ex-patriots' compared to the national seats, the election model selection and adjustments, and other issues. According to international documents and conventions, expert recommendations as well as the Macedonian Constitution, one of the election principles that by all means ought to be respected while creating the election model of the country is to consider the principle of the voting equality. This indispensable and essential democratic rule is built on the equality of citizens and ought to be respected for all types of elected political representation, including the seats assigned for the ex-patriot voters. This paper intends to analyze whether in legal and practical terms the principle of the equality of voting is respected in the case of domestically elected members of Parliament in Macedonia, compared to the elected ex-patriot MPs, considering comparison with the experiences of other countries. Included are the OSCE/ODIHR recommendations on the Macedonian Electoral Codex, the Venice Commission recommendations, as well as studies and comparative papers from IDEA, IFES and other organizations and authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

E-democracy refers to using new Information and Communication Technologies in order to increase and enhance citizen engagement in democratic processes. Different e-democracy tools provide different levels of citizen involvement, such as: informative, consultative and cooperative public participation. This paper will evaluate the e-democracy strategy and levels of citizen involvement in the Republic of Macedonia while attempting to compare the Macedonian case with e-democracy strategies and citizen involvement that may be found in EU Member States today. The questionnaire used in the EPACE project (Exchanging good practices for the promotion of an active citizenship in the EU) served as a basis for our research and it was distributed to all the ministries within the Government of the Republic of Macedonia, focusing on the following issues: strategies related to e-democracy and their main objectives; and, e-participation tools and projects for the future. Relevant officials from the Macedonian Ministry of Information Society and Administration were contacted for more detailed information about strategy and cases. In order to gain an insight into e-democracy at a local level, we analyzed the web portals of local governments, with a special emphasis on the e-tools used. As the findings suggest, both EU Member States and the Republic of Macedonia have a document which can be considered as part of a National Strategy which refers to the development of an Information Society as a whole whilst paying only modest attention to e-democracy. In contrast to the EU Member States, where more or less all three levels of citizen involvement are present, the findings in the Republic of Macedonia suggest that only citizen involvement at an information and consultation level is currently in existence. Further research on this topic should be undertaken in order to investigate the extent to which the applied e-tools in the Republic of Macedonia provide communication and feedback in both directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A brand is a combination of trust, experience and emotions that have been building up for years and every disappointment of a customer hurts the brand. Brand in politics is an even more sensitive topic. Disappointed voters may not vote on the next elections or could change their voting preferences. Losing loyal voters is the worst scenario for political parties and could lead to deterioration of political strength, loss of party members and even termination of political party. From a political branding perspective, young people are a particularly interesting and important group, and by studying their attitudes, behaviour and perceptions, it is possible, to some extent, predict political preferences and prepare for future political conditions. Furthermore, political participation and youth awareness about politics are low, which makes investigating their political perceptions even more important for maintaining the future of democracy in general. The present paper uses perceptual maps to depict the perception of the five most popular political parties in the Republic of Croatia within the young population in Croatia. The data was collected through a highly structured online questionnaire on a sample of 181 respondents in the age group from 15 to 29. The main findings reveal the fact that all of the considered parties are positioned in the most negative part of the spectrum when it comes to the quality of the people and the program as well as the level of determination and honesty. This combined with the high level of political cynicism observed in the previous studies, almost ensures a high level of political apathy in the future, which poses a significant threat to the future of politics and democracy. When it comes to other positioning variables such as corruption and successfulness as well as modern approach and focus on youth, political parties are positioned very differently which could be a starting point for building strong and recognizable brands. Perception maps also reveal the uncovered areas on the political scene which could be incorporated in the marketing strategy and could enable branding of the existing or possible new parties based on those variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The government as we knew it will never be the same. During the COVID-19 pandemic ICT proved to be essential for shock mitigation and building resilient economy. E-government is an important tool not only for promoting the quality of public services, citizen participation, cost reduction, sustainability, competitiveness, and economic development, but for tackling crisis as well. The research on e-government in Croatia is rather scarce, especially concerning the recent period that caused unprecedented changes in the way government operates. Digital government initiatives launched in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have been accompanied by increased online interaction with public authorities in Croatia. The current crisis has raised several important issues regarding privacy, security, and the digital divide, but has also paved the way for the establishment of a new and better government and society. The aim of this paper is to describe Croatian position before the crisis and present the most important lessons that can be drawn from the implications of the current crisis by highlighting its role as a driver for egovernment development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

2014 marked Romania's first new media presidential campaign, resulting in the unexpected victory of the candidate who had previously been presented by polls and media as the runner-up. Through the same electoral event, we could observe, for the first time, a presidential result favoured by the "citizen-camera witnessing" phenomenon, generated by the Facebook civic engagement of the Romanian voters from abroad. In the present paper, we aim to weigh the impact of the campaign which was carried out on Facebook on the runoff voting days, on the election results. By using the content analysis method, we are going to assess the voting dealignment generated by the first web 2.0 presidential campaign in Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neoliberalism is a global phenomenon which has various forms. It is an ideology, as well as a package of political actions. Although it is an economic concept, nowadays it is present in all areas of social life, including education. Explicitly, neoliberalism facilitates cooperation between diverse social factors. However, its implicit purposes are capital accumulation and economic growth, and thus in collision with civil rights such as free access to social resources. From the aspect of education, neoliberalism is a pillar of social practices based on one's own activity, i.e. participation. This means that an individual is responsible for own wellbeing, regardless of conditions he/she lives in. Since children with disabilities are socially marginalized, neoliberal principles of participation within mainstream settings and taking over responsibility for own action in current social conditions are questionable. Therefore, in this paper, the presence of neoliberal orientation in inclusive education will be scrutinized. In this way, a critical approach to contemporary interpretations of inclusive education is addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conversational agents are today implemented in everyday life. These so-called chatbots are inter alia used for customer support or as newsbots in messenger applications. However, have you ever used chatbots to submit ideas for your local community planning projects or policy making procedures? The present work suggests a possible application of a chatbot as a facilitator to promote the process and documentation of citizens' idea generation for direct and active citizen participation initiatives. Therefore, we conduct a design-science-research project and consider relevant literature as well as specialists' knowledge from the field of citizen participation by conducting expert interviews to gather insights on relevant capabilities for chatbots to facilitate citizens. We present design principles (DP) which are based on identified meta-requirements, to deliver guidance for the design and implementation of suitable chatbots, which are capable of conversing with and facilitating citizens during the idea generation process. A dialog scenario based on the DPs serves to instantiate and develop a software-chatbot-prototype to conduct a user test and check the fulfillment of the DPs in our implemented solution of a chatbot. By doing so, we reveal the potential of automated facilitation and show one possible way to instantiate the design principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This literature review used and expanded Cardullo & Kitchin's (2018) “scaffold of smart citizen participation” to classify the participation level found in the smart governance literature. This review highlights the importance of the use of a common metric for measuring citizens level of participation in smart governance. The departure point of this work is the literature review developed by Tomor et al. (2019). Their review was updated and compared. We confirmed some challenges positioned by the literature on the indiscriminate use of citizen participation as both an intrinsic characteristic of governance and as an outcome of the collaboration (Meijer & Bolívar, 2015; Tomor et al., 2019). This lack of a common understanding of the level of citizen autonomy creates a confusion in the literature regarding the actual level of participation, which highlights a need for further research about citizen participation and collaboration in smart governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When it comes to construction projects, public debates and protests may arise if architectural plans remain unshared with the citizens they might affect. To involve the public affected by construction projects, offering easily graspable visualization for citizens is key. E-Participation provides opportunities to include technological innovations that help to inform the public and offering diverse feedback mechanisms. We design and evaluate an e-participation application that uses augmented reality and virtual reality technology to let citizens participate in the development of public construction projects. Following the design science research approach, we put forward a set of meta-requirements and design principles for the development of an e-participation application using these technologies. Furthermore, we present insights into what forms and levels of participation citizens and initiators are interested in, when it comes to the use of augmented and virtual reality for e-participation, and thereby explore the potentials of these technologies for public participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizen participation makes an increasingly important effect on co-creating public value required by the sustainable governance of societies. The offline action participation authentically brings government policies into force but could not be automatically quantified, while online opinion participation could implement diverse incentives by recording participation process but make limited contribution to the governance of societies. The isolation deters them from complementing with each other. Therefore, according to the social exchange theory we propose an O2O (Offline-to-online) citizen participation ecosystem for the sustainable governance of societies. It includes three key participants (citizen, government organization, and O2O platform manager) and five components (motivations, contextualized governance policies and strategies, offline action participation, online rewards collection, and retainment & recommendation). The ecosystem is validated and improved by a case study on the O2O green commuting governance in China. This study enhances the effective combination of online and offline citizen participation through a closed-loop process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]