Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Public engagement in local government: the voice and influence of citizens in online communicative spaces

2014; Routledge; Volume: 18; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1369118x.2014.986180

1468-4462

Julie Firmstone, Stephen Coleman,

Public Policy and Administration Research

AbstractThe communications and engagement strategies of local councils play an important role in contributing to the public's understanding of local democracies, and their engagement with local issues. Based on a study of the local authority in the third largest city in the UK, Leeds, this article presents an empirically based analysis of the impact of new opportunities for public engagement afforded by digital media on the Council's communication with citizens. Drawing on over 20 face-to-face semi-structured interviews with elected politicians, Council strategists, Council communications specialists, mainstream journalists, and citizen journalists, the article explores perceptions of the Council's engagement and communication with citizens from the perspective of a range of actors involved in the engagement process. The research asks what the differing motivations behind the Council's communications and engagement strategies mean for the way that digital media are and might be used in the future to enhance the role of citizens in local governance. The research suggests that while there are no grounds for expecting digital media to displace existing channels of public engagement, digital media are beginning to play an important role in defining and reconfiguring the role of citizens within local governance.Keywords: politicsnewsjournalismsocial mediadigital divide AcknowledgementsWe are thankful to everybody who took part in the study.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.FundingFunding for these interviews was gratefully received from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Digital Economy Communities and Culture Network.Notes on contributorsJulie Firmstone is a lecturer at the School of Media and Communication, University of Leeds. Her research interests address a range of issues in the fields of sociology of journalism, political communications, and audience research. Her most recent work investigates the relationship between the local news media, digital forms of communication, and attempts to engage citizens in democracy at a local level. She is also interested in political and editorial journalism, the communication of the politics of the EU, the European public sphere, civil society and the EU's democratic deficit, and representations of minorities in the news. [email: j.a.firmstone@leeds.ac.uk]Stephen Coleman is Professor of Political Communication at the University of Leeds, Honorary Professor in Political Science at the University of Copenhagen, and Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. His main research interests are (i) methods of political engagement; (ii) uses of digital media in representative democracies; (iii) intersections between popular culture and formal politics; (iv) political efficacy; (v) citizenship education; (vi) political aesthetics, performance, and rhetoric; (vii) literary and dramatic representations of politics; and (viii) forms of deliberation and decision-making. [email: s.coleman@leeds.ac.uk]Notes1. Funding for these interviews was gratefully received from the EPSRC Digital Economy Communities and Culture Network.2. See the appendix for details of interviewees.3. Kentucky Fried Chicken fast-food restaurant.