The internet, citizens, and public policy

摘要

This special issue includes six of the best papers from the 17th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (dg.o 2016) that explore the intersection among the Internet, citizens, and public policy. As a theme, these papers ask how citizens and governments deliberate, engage, and interact in online spaces related to public policy and problems. The studies present two noteworthy observations on this theme. First, public deliberation about policy on online platforms has its own lifecycle and stages, but the behavior of online participants does not differ from what is known of citizens' participation in offline meetings and deliberations. Second, the context of studying social media use is broad (e.g., political regime change, urban resilience, and law enforcement agencies), but Twitter and Facebook are the primary information technologies under scrutiny.