Introduction
Scholars have long noted what might be described as a democratic deficit in e-government, with greater emphasis on service delivery and efficiency than on transparency or citizen participation (Musso, Weare and Hale 2000; Ho 2002; Chadwick and May 2003; West 2004; Scott 2006; Coursey and Norris 2008; Dawes 2008; Holzer et al. 2008; Ganapati 2011). Yet, a recent Pew survey shows that a third of all American adults now use online methods for engaging with government, including contacting government officials, signing online petitions, or commenting on a policy issue (Fox and Rainie 2014). Social media, like other interactive features of Web 2.0, may facilitate political and economic participation online (see Boulianne 2009 for a meta-analysis). A majority of online American adults (52%) used two or more social media sites as of 2014, with Facebook, at 71%, the most popular (Duggan et al. 2015). While those who use social networking sites to engage in political or civic engagement online are a minority, still 21% of these users joined or started a political or social-issue group in a social networking site in 2012. This was up from 13% of users just four years earlier (Smith 2013).
To what extent have information and participatory opportunities for citizens on government websites changed in recent years, especially at the local level, and through interactive Web 2.0 features such as social networking sites? Civic engagement refers to involvement in the public sphere, broadly construed (Bennett 2008), and we measure information and participatory opportunities on local government websites that might facilitate citizen engagement in government, policy issues, and voluntary or neighborhood efforts.
Local governments are a traditional focus of citizen participation, and citizens are often most interested in or most knowledgeable about issues that are (literally) closest to home (Oates 1972; Berry, Portney and Thomson 1993; Peters 2001; Oakerson 1999). Prior research has identified large cities as the leaders in local e-government (Ho 2002; Moon 2002; Jun and Weare 2010; Jimenez, Mossberger and Wu 2012), and so observing change across these cities may indicate how digital government ideas and practices for citizen engagement have evolved.
In this chapter, we examine change in online information and interactivity scores for the websites of the 75 largest U.S. cities between 2009 and 2011—a period that was marked by federal initiatives and the rapid growth of social media use. The Obama administration declared open government a priority in the early days of the president’s first term (Obama 2009), emphasizing greater transparency online and the use of interactive platforms such as open data portals, social media, and forms of online participation such as crowdsourcing. The spread of new digital tools and shifting agendas at the federal level might stimulate changes throughout the federal system (Jones and Baumgartner 2005). Additionally, the use of social media more than doubled between 2008 and 2011 to 59% of the population (Hampton, Sessions and Her 2011). So, this was a critical period for examining local government responses to new technologies for civic engagement.
While we examine both information and interactivity on local government websites, here we focus, in particular, on the marked change in interactivity scores, which track features that allow for customization of information, one-way input, and two-way interaction or discussion of policy. This contrasts with more incremental change in information on these same websites during this two-year period.
The largest changes during this two-year period occurred for cities that were furthest behind, narrowing initial gaps between cities. We compare the results to theories of non-incremental diffusion (Jones and Baumgartner 2005; Boushey 2010), discuss subsequent research on the use of social media and other interactive tools, and also examine challenges that remain for effective use of these tools in light of their rapid adoption. In the concluding section, we discuss the future implications of these findings for greater government transparency and involvement of citizens through e-government.
Civic Engagement, Information, and Interactivity Online
Researchers have not found widespread support for democratic participation through digital government at the local level (Musso, Weare and Hale 2000; Ho 2002; West 2004; Coursey and Norris 2008; Dawes 2008; Ganapati 2011). This is particularly true for online discussion of policy issues. For example, based on his 2004 content analysis, Scott (2006) found that only 2 of the 100 cities he studied provided for online discussion, but that 45 offered comment forms for one-way feedback. A study by Holzer et al. (2008) gave municipal governments a poor grade for e-government use to advance online citizen participation. Yet, some studies have found that major city websites in the U.S. host a considerable amount of information, despite limited online participation (Scott 2006). These prior studies did not include the adoption of social media, which potentially enables two-way interactions between citizens and governments and collective dialogue among citizens.
A notable advance within the past years is the emergence of “Web 2.0,” or the interactive web. Tim O’Reilly introduced the term Web 2.0 in 2005 to distinguish web-based technologies that facilitate integrated but cost-effective services and allow users to be co-developers, which aim to harness collective intelligence (O’Reilly 2005). Social media technologies are part of Web 2.0 and are described by Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) as a “group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content.”
Theories of policy change demonstrate that although they are rare, periods of rapid change may punctuate the incrementalism that tends to characterize public policy (Baumgartner and Jones 1993; Jones and Baumgartner 2005). Policy diffusion is an important mechanism for promoting change across multiple jurisdictions in a decentralized federal system (Walker 1969; Gray 1973; Berry and Berry 1990), and such decentralization can make system-wide change a slow process. Yet, at times, ideas may cascade rapidly across jurisdictions (Baumgartner and Jones 1993). Policies that spread contagiously are relatively salient, simple, noncontroversial and low-cost (Boushey 2010, 63; see also Rose 1993 on policy characteristics and adoption). Public attention to some aspect of e-government, such as social media, might encourage its adoption. Federal example through the open government initiative might also promote “point source diffusion.” Advocacy by professional associations or civic groups may raise the salience of some features. Broader changes in how individuals use technology may increase the salience of these tools. We investigate incremental and rapid changes in information and activities online, and factors associated with these developments.
Online Information and Interactivity Scores
This study uses content analysis...
