Citizen Participation and Social Technologies: Exploring the Perspective of Emergency Organizations

摘要

Current technological advances on ubiquitous computing and web 2.0 open up new possibilities to promote an active participation of citizens in different domains including emergency management. Such a kind of participative model requires not a proactive attitude from citizens but also of the implication of emergency management organizations that have the responsibility of managing the situation. Emergency management is a highly professional domain characterized by the stress that emergency workers experience when facing unpredictable events that have a social and economic impact in society. Citizens could contribute in this process as far as they do not interfere with the protocols and activities of professional workers who will not accept any change that could compromise their efficacy. Many research works focus on how citizens utilize social technologies during emergency situations for self-organizing or for citizen journalism, however, the perspective of emergency management organization has been less explored. In this paper, we present a study that goes deeper into how organizations envision the use of technologies to increase citizen participation in their procedures. This study aims at being a step further to understand how a more active and effective citizen role could be reached and how technologies could contribute to this end.