E-Democracy in Russia: Political Awareness and Participation Among Young Citizens

It was suggested that the most important opportunity provided by the Internet is the ability to practice democracy. There are two main trends in the Russian political landscape, as far as e-participation is concerned. First is the growth of political awareness and concern especially among the young...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEuropean Conference on e-Government p. 205
Main Authors Golubeva, Anastasia, Ishmatova, Diana
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published Kidmore End Academic Conferences International Limited 01.06.2013
Subjects
Accountability
Citizen participation
Citizens
Citizenship
Decision making
Democracy
Internet
Technological change
Russia
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Summary:It was suggested that the most important opportunity provided by the Internet is the ability to practice democracy. There are two main trends in the Russian political landscape, as far as e-participation is concerned. First is the growth of political awareness and concern especially among the young population which promoted the bottom-up selforganizing e-participation. In the absence of censorship, the Internet is increasingly used as a platform for bottom-up political organizing in the face of centralized control of other media and lack of «official» e-participation mechanisms capable to consider citizens' input or to enable dialectical discussion on political issues. The second trend - is the increasing attention paid at the official government level to e-democracy development. Nevertheless the lack of institutional involvement and support alongside other negative factors of government-society relations might become a serious obstacle for successful enactment of e-participation. The goal of this paper is to explore the potential of e-participation in Russia for increasing public involvement of young citizens in decision-making, taking into account current conditions and historical legacy. We approach the problem by examining the ability of top-down and bottom-up e-participation mechanisms to overcome the current obstacles preventing young citizens from engaging in conventional participation mechanisms. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
ISSN:2049-1026
2049-1034