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Brian Loader and Dan Mercea rally a group of political/social/media scientists to shed light on social media and democracy. Is social media supporting transformations of democratic power or merely inspiring the latest round of cyber-utopian hype? Current developments in democracy are investigated, in recent Internet contexts, more or less in the context of social media.

A wide democratic view of participation and eParticipation informs research centred on citizens' experiences of participation. Case studies of participation are conceived in the vein of work place studies: ethnographic approaches to studying current situations and identifying potential opportunities and challenges of using more digital technology. The concept of "Participation Spaces" themes the investigation, helping to focus on the perceptions and preferences of those participating, without pre-specifying technologies, websites, locations or activities. Theoretical and methodological input from related fields, including Participation, Social Movement Research, Sociology and Social Informatics, supports the studies and helps to identify the most useful results.

This paper focuses on the importance of non-public social media spaces in contemporary democratic participation at the grassroots level, based on case studies of citizen-led, community and activist groups. The research pilots the concept of participation spaces to reify online and offline contexts where people participate in democracy. Participation spaces include social media presences, websites, blogs, email, paper media, and physical spaces. This approach enables the parallel study of diverse spaces (more or less public; on and offline). Participation spaces were investigated across three local groups, through interviews and participant observation; then modelled as Socio-Technical Interaction Networks (STINs) [1]. This research provides an alternative and richer picture of social media use, within eParticipation, to studies solely based on public Internet content, such as data sets of tweets. In the participation spaces studies most communication takes place in non-public contexts, such as closed Facebook groups, email, and face-to-face meetings. Non-public social media spaces are particularly effective in supporting collaboration between people from diverse social groups. These spaces can be understood as boundary objects [2] and play strong roles in democracy.

In this paper, we explore the possibilities of using Web 2.0 for collaborative production of government services in the UK. Can co-production be used to deliver eGovernment services in the UK? What kind of services could use Web 2.0-supported co-production? Could Web 2.0 help to promote cooperation? If Web 2.0 and collaborative production can be usefully allied, what are the potential advantages, risks, and barriers? We give a brief overview of the current territory and outline a study to investigate.

This paper describes the context and background of the conference workshop "Social networking tools supporting constructive involvement throughout the policy-cycle". EParticipation initiatives are increasingly applying social networking tools and sites at the interactive core of their participation processes. This paper looks at these objectives in more detail. It begins to identify characteristics of individual projects and types of social networking tools that will need to be explored by practitioners in order to successfully apply social networking tools in their projects. A five stage policy-cycle is used to categorise these projects' relationships with democratic policy processes and intended or possible political impacts.

This paper describes the use of scenarios as a central part of the design methodology, in a project to create an e-participation initiative, working with the national news agencies in 3 Western Balkans countries. The stakeholders in the project came from a variety of backgrounds, with different skills, experiences of technology and ideas about participatory democracy. For design purposes, the most important stakeholders involved are journalists from the Balkan news agencies, as these will be major users of the tool, creating content and managing e-participation processes. Scenarios were used to put these journalists at the centre of the design and specification process. This method also provided the diverse stakeholders with a focus for discussion and shared understanding. The use of scenarios influenced the design of all aspects of the e-participation initiative, including the format of the online tools, the rules and methods for managing online discussions and the offline path of influence with those in power.

This paper describes the use of scenarios as a central part of the design methodology, in a project to create an e-participation initiative, working with the national news agencies in 3 Western Balkans countries. The stakeholders in the project came from a variety of backgrounds, with different skills, experiences of technology and ideas about participatory democracy. For design purposes, the most important stakeholders involved are journalists from the Balkan news agencies, as these will be major users of the tool, creating content and managing e-participation processes. Scenarios were used to put these journalists at the centre of the design and specification process. This method also provided the diverse stakeholders with a focus for discussion and shared understanding. The use of scenarios influenced the design of all aspects of the e-participation initiative, including the format of the online tools, the rules and methods for managing online discussions and the offline path of influence with those in power.

This paper describes the use of scenarios as a central part of the design methodology, in a project to create an e-participation initiative, working with the national news agencies in 3 Western Balkans countries. The stakeholders in the project came from a variety of backgrounds, with different skills, experiences of technology and ideas about participatory democracy. For design purposes, the most important stakeholders involved are journalists from the Balkan news agencies, as these will be major users of the tool, creating content and managing e-participation processes. Scenarios were used to put these journalists at the centre of the design and specification process. This method also provided the diverse stakeholders with a focus for discussion and shared understanding. The use of scenarios influenced the design of all aspects of the e-participation initiative, including the format of the online tools, the rules and methods for managing online discussions and the offline path of influence with those in power.

Citizen-led participation in democracy is explored through studying the online and offline spaces where people work together to influence those in power and improve their communities. The concept of a participation space is introduced to describe these contexts. The spatial theme guides the research, from literature, through methodology, to findings. Case studies of three community/activist groups provide the data to identify participation spaces and model these as Socio-Technical Interaction Networks (STINs) (Kling, McKim, & King, 2003). These participation spaces include social media, email, and blogs, as well as paper media and offline spaces, such as rooms. The STIN models of these participation spaces reveal that the characteristics which influence their use for participation are the same for online and offline spaces. These can be understood in terms of spatial characteristics: the spaces' perceived boundaries and inhabitants, combined with ownership and access, including costs. As well as recording the roles of these spatial characteristics, the participation space models map the day-to-day activities of participation. Collating these activities reveals that participation primarily takes the form of communication: organising and increasing solidarity, sharing information, encouraging involvement, and trying to influence events. The models also reveal that most of these activities are non-public. This sociotechnical study describes the relationship between the activities of local, grassroots democracy and the characteristics of the online and offline spaces where it takes place.

In a UK city, various crocheted protest banners have appeared, containing political statements concerning planned developments in their locations. Photos of these banners are shared across social media, raising awareness and potentially playing a role in local campaigns. This study explored peoples' perceptions of these banners as photos within social media interactions, focusing on how associated emotions or values influenced their views of the campaigns. The aim was to increase understanding of the impact of images within social media, both on engagement with offline situations and on propensity to forward (e.g., retweet). People who had posted or shared pictures of the banners were interviewed. The study is framed by considering the banners—in both yarn format and digital photos—as memes. This situates the study within contemporary research into public participation online, especially the ways in which information, disinformation, and emotions travel across social media, and the influence of this on democracy. This article uses diverse definitions of memes to draw out insights from the interview data, about participants' engagement with the banners and with the corresponding local issues, campaigns, and ultimately democracy. Interviewees were engaged by both the medium of the offline banners and the text embroidered onto them. In terms of the medium, the process of crochet was most important—indicating the time invested and encompassing memories. Interviewees were most engaged by banners concerning places they passed every day, though they did not agree with all the banners' messages. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing ➝ Social media

This chapter describes an eParticipation model, designed to be especially appropriate to young people and complex topics: distributed discussion. It draws on the experiences of the HUWY project, which piloted a distributed discussion model, in four countries, to assess how this supported young people's engagement. The pilot revealed that young people valued structured and well supported discussions, particularly well-facilitated offline discussions. Integrating online and offline, national and international elements are the advantages and challenges of this model. This chapter aims to give an overview of the theoretical basis, process and impacts of the model and to provide recommendations for future development and use.

The User Engagement Report assesses HUWY project?s success in engaging its two main user groups: young people and policy-makers. 1. Did the HUWY project achieve its objectives in engaging young people? What were the affects of that engagement? 2. Policy-makers have a crucial role in the HUWY project as an influential audience for the ideas discussed and refined by groups of young people, as part of the HUWY process. Did the HUWY project manage to persuade and support policy-makers to fulfil this role? How did they feel about their involvement? As this engagement is central to the HUWY project, the data and analysis in this report enable us to assess whether we were successful in meeting our 7 Key Evaluation Factors. It also enables us to review our success in meeting most of our project objectives1. The HUWY evaluation methodology followed in this report resembles current best practice in eParticipation evaluation: * working with stakeholders to add more detail our choice of objectives and success factors; * addressing objectives from social, technical and political perspectives; * using a triangulation of instruments to gather data, enabling more accurate and meaningful results; * highlighting results using Key Evaluation Factors. During the first phase of this evaluation, the HUWY team worked with young people and policy-makers to investigate the evaluation factors and outcomes that are most important to them. Their ideas added more specific detail to the project objectives and influenced the evaluation methodology. Their preferences were used to highlight certain objectives as Key Evaluation Factors. A detailed methodology was established, using a triangulation of data collection techniques to support accurate and meaningful results. Inputs from users (young people and policy-makers) are at the heart of this evaluation. The process of investigating young people and policy-makers? engagement criteria, and the evolution of the project methodology and instruments is described in D6.1 Engagement and Impact ...

A recent UK Government commissioned study found concerning levels of unemployment among computing students from disadvantaged, black and minority ethnic backgrounds. The study highlighted that work experience was a factor in increased levels of graduate employment. As such, it is vital that students have equal access to such work experience. This study considers the availability of work experience to 140 computing students at two city centre UK universities. Data analysis considered socioeconomic background and ethnicity to determine if these influenced attitudes to work experience. While students' socioeconomic backgrounds and ethnicity had little influence on their interest in work experience, patterns of success in gaining work experience reflected worrying graduate (un)employment patterns, with those from disadvantaged, black or minority ethnic backgrounds less able to secure work experience. These findings have serious implications for university and