Category Archives: UK

Talking to imagined citizens: Why share information when no-one talks back?

This is a subject I’ve been thinking about for a long time: the old eparticipation problem of lurkers.  I described the challenges of understanding posting to a non-responsive audience in blog posts here and here, back in 2017, when I … Continue reading

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Community representatives, information channels and citizen democratic engagement

Here’s a link to something I co-authored with Hazel Hall and Bruce Ryan: a paper which explores how elected (yet unpaid) community councillors in Scotland exploit information channels for democratic engagement with the citizens that they represent. We demonstrate that … Continue reading

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Lurking and what leaders know about their invisible audience

Let’s talk about something obvious: Leaders (for instance community councillors) share information online but the paradox is, that they often don’t get a visible response. Why do they do it then? What are their expectations of how the information they … Continue reading

Posted in e-participation, Information behaviour, research, UK | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

Information literacy to support democratic engagement

Our latest community councillor project is now well underway. It’s called IL-DEM, and we’re blogging about it on our community knowledge website (Community-Knect.net) it focusses on the information behaviours of community councillors in Scotland as they go about their role … Continue reading

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Community councils online? Up to a point, Lord Copper

Some readers may be aware that during the blog silence, I have in fact been involved in a bit of research, looking at different aspects of the use of the internet by Scottish community councils. The latest output has been … Continue reading

Posted in e-participation, research, UK, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 6 Comments