Social capital in web-mediated citizen participation-the role of civic innovations and local publicness

摘要

The article takes a look to a local project aiming to create citizen oriented web publicness. A Web platform of Manse Square was initiated five years ago to develop and increase different participatory tools for citizens as well as to encourage active citizenship. Manse Square web site consists of different sections including neighbourhood sites managed by voluntary citizens. Besides strengthening civic activism Manse Square has aimed at enhancing dialogue between city inhabitants and city administration. In the paper I study how local communities use the web sites and what effects participation at Manse Square has had on citizens. The results show that people are able to produce web-mediated publicness independently. Participation has also strenghtened people's self-confident and increased their social networks. Despite their eagerness to maintain web sites the Internet has still remained merely as a channel of information delivery for neighbourhoods participating in Manse Square. People have not yet found the interactive potential of the Net as significant as achieving publicness for their districts.