Adam Wyner
email: azwyner@liverpool.ac.uk

Katie Atkinson

Trevor Bench-Capon

Towards a Structured Online Consultation Tool

Keywords: policy-making, online consultation, argumentation

de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Introduction

The Structured Online Consultation tool (SCT) is a component of the IMPACT Project, a European Union funded Framework 7 project in the ICT for Governance and Policy Modeling theme. The focus of the IMPACT Project is to improve public policy-making. In this paper, we first briefly outline the policymaking context of the Project and the other tools. We elaborate on the role of the SCT and introduce Argumentation Schemes. We give an example of how an argumentation scheme, Practical Reasoning, is represented in the SCT as well as how the respondents are led to consider various aspects of the argument, so that specific points of agreement and disagreement can be registered. The tool is underwritten by a computational model of argumentation, which is briefly outlined. Using the model, we can implement a program to automatically reason with respect to arguments that represent defeasible and inconsistent information, to assist in the construction of surveys, and to aggregate, analyse, and evaluate responses to a completed survey. We discuss how argumentation schemes can be analysed in a form compatible with this model of argumentation. As the model is not presented to the respondent, usability is maintained since the respondent need only answer easy to understand, often "yes/no", questions. This version of the SCT is more advanced than previous versions (or related tools) in that it uses richer forms of interconnected, formalised argumentation schemes.

Context and Current Tools

Policy making is generally viewed as a cyclical, multi-stage process [START_REF] Bench-Capon | Knowledge based systems applied to law: A framework for discussion[END_REF][START_REF] Birkland | An Introduction to the Policy Process: Theories, Concepts, and Models of Public Policy Making[END_REF]. Simplifying, we have the following stages:

-Evaluation: policy analysts look at existing laws and regulations, considering how the laws and regulations achieve the intended goals and identifying conflicts among goals. -Agenda setting: based on the evaluation, public administrators define areas for change or improvements. -Policy formulation: given an agenda, policies are proposed and criticised.

-Decision: after consultations about the proposed policies, the draft laws and regulations are introduced into the legislative process. -Implementation: Once enacted, legislation is enforced.

The IMPACT Project contributes to the policy formulation stage, where proposed laws and regulations are made available for comment to the general public as well as to a selection of stakeholders with a special interest in topics of the policy. Presuming that the policy has been formulated, we can refer to the commenting activity as policy consultation.

There are several current or proposed policy-making support tools in the European Union and the United States which use currently available wiki, comment, email, or social networking technologies (See [START_REF] Macintosh | Providing argument support for eparticipation[END_REF][START_REF] Cartwright | Digital Decision-Making: Using Computational Argumentation to Support Democratic Processes[END_REF] for discussion of other tools such as IBIS+, Compendium, DebateGraph). We discuss several of these briefly in order to set the context for the contribution of the SCT. 1The United Kingdom's Cabinet Office Public Reading website 2 , which currently presents the Protection of Freedoms Bill, uses a website that unfolds the proposed bill, allowing online readers to look at specific sections. At the bottom level, the user can use a threaded comment facility to respond to a particular portion or responses made by other users. With the Public Reading tool, it is difficult to get an overview understanding of the whole policy and the relation of responses to it. Thus, the role and impact of responses is not highlighted. There is no support for analysing the responses, which is then done "manually" by analysts of the consultation, making the contribution of the responses to the development of the policy draft obscure. Moreover, while the responses are specifically linked to parts of the legislation, the unconstrained nature of the responses means the consultation is unstructured and unsystematic. Not only does this allow inappropriate or irrelevant responses, but it may not elicit the kind of important or useful information that is the primary motivation for the consultation in the first place. The Bill itself proposes a solution to some legislative problem; comments on the Bill may discuss alternative solutions. Yet understanding the Bill or alternative solutions may rest on the motivations and justifications underlying the solutions, for example, in terms of social values that the solution promotes. Making these motivations and justifications overt would further support rational analysis and understanding of the Bill, which in turn would better represent the stakeholders' interests and objectives.

The UK Prime Minister's Office ePetition and the European Commission's The European Citizens' Initiative facilities allow citizens to electronically create, sign, and submit petitions. 3 By the same token, these tools can be used to "vote" on a policy proposal. The tools, which enable respondents to submit petitions, are web-based versions of what is has been traditionally accomplished manually. Both of these tools contribute to the policy formulation stage of the policymaking cycle, but not to the comment stage. There is no analytic framework. A particular problem is that it is unclear exactly what respondents are signatory to; that is, it provides an unrefined all or nothing representation of a point of view, whereas there may well be respondents who agree with some parts of the proposal, but not other parts, yet nonetheless sign on to the whole. The SCT is designed to differentiate and draw out such subtle alternative viewpoints.

Other initiatives aim to improve the quality of comments to proposed legislation. The US General Services Administration is preparing a tool to support consultation, ExpertNet, which draws "crowdsources" expertise and attempts to structure responses with social networking facilities such as ranking responses, providing specific questions for community voting, or annotating responses, among others. While this does give indicative information on respondents' reactions, the legislation is not represented in an analytic form, much less supporting machine analysis. Rather, the content of the legislation and the reactions to it must be further analysed, though there is no analytic framework. There are additional issues raised about how to identify, certify, and monitor the community of experts. The RegulationRoom is an academically hosted facility for commenting on proposed legislation, providing guidelines on effective comments. This is more substantive than ExpertNet, yet requires highly skilled individuals to follow the guidelines; it may best suit respondents who already participate in policy consultations. 4Finally, in the US state of Massachusetts, legislators are using a wiki tool, LexPop, to "crowdsource" the incremental development of legislation. 5 The question here concerns who is in a position to use such a tool, not just in terms of representing the interests of others and reasoning about legislation, which often requires a deep understanding of law and how to author legislation, but also reasoning about legal values and consequences. The success of current wikis (e.g. Wikipedia) rests on an often small coterie of self-selected, self-regulating authors who write about specialist topics, where questions and controversies can be left unresolved and where there are no legislated consequences.

Despite these drawbacks, these current tools and initiatives are clearly potentially important and useful in leveraging current technologies to draw in greater citizen participation to policy-making by making participation easier and improving the informativeness of feedback. However, providing the means to address or avoid these limitations would positively impact on policy making. In particular, the tools discussed above do not further the substantive semantic analysis of the comments in a form that supports machine-processing of rich, complex information, particularly where the comments introduce conflicts and inconsistencies that must be reasoned with, that is, they do not make use of current thinking or techniques found in Artificial Intelligence on argumentation.

Contribution of the SCT

The SCT is based on a formal, computational model of argumentation and argumentation schemes, providing a semantic analysis of the comments in a form which can be processed and reasoned with further. Thus, it contributes what other tools lack. The proposed version of the SCT is more advanced than current tools for it makes use of interconnected, expressive, and formalised argumentation schemes. While it does structure the feedback, it does so in a way that is accessible and corresponds closely with intuitive considerations. Not only is the informativeness of comments increased, but reasoning about conflict and inconsistency is facilitated. Consequently, analysts, policy-makers, and members of the public will have a greater understanding of the meaning and implications of the policy as well as how they might specifically critique or contribute to it. Along with the other tools in the IMPACT toolbox, described below, the SCT provides a means to identify, represent, and reason with information concerning policy, using an underlying computational model.

The SCT is one out of four tools in the IMPACT Project, which is developing a suite of interconnected tools to facilitate public policy deliberations. All the tools share the underlying computational model of argumentation.

-Argument reconstruction, which applies text analytic techniques and tools to source texts and comments on policy. -Argument visualisation, which provides a graphical representation of elements of the debate concerning the initial policy and responses. -Policy modeling, which allows users to model alternative outcomes of policies when applied in particular circumstances and the effect on selected cases. -Structured consultation, which harvests justifications for particular elements of proposed policies in a structured manner.

For the purposes of the IMPACT Project, the four tools, the SCT among them, will be integrated into the IMPACT Project argumentation toolbox, allowing other components of the toolbox to access and exchange common data. The SCT will be a Rich Internet Application (RIA), which are web applications that have many of the characteristics of a desktop application, but are delivered over the internet in a browser, plug-in, sandbox, or virtual machine. In addition, the SCT will be implemented to adhere to the OSGi standard, which provides an environment where applications are modular bundles that are collections of classes, jars, and configuration files that declare their external dependencies and that can be remotely installed, started, stopped, updated, and uninstalled without requiring a system reboot. Finally, as the SCT is to use data from and provide data to other IMPACT Project tools, the SCT will support the export and import of argumentation scheme elements in an Extensible Markup Language (XML) format, e.g. the Legal Knowledge Interchange Format (LKIF), via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). On the project website, one can find further information about the other tools in the toolbox. Underpinning all four of the tools is a formal, computational model of argumentation and policy.

The Representation of Argumentation

In policy-making, arguments are central since, given the deliberative context of the consultation, contributors respond to some point of the proposed legislation either by arguing for or against that point, or providing alternatives (which may or not be construed as incompatible). The arguments may take a range of forms such as giving reasons against a point, giving a definition, adding a premise, identifying anomalies, giving a counter-example, or stating conditions under which the rule is inapplicable, among others. While contributors are aware that they are deliberating, they do not usually systematically address issues raised by other contributors, much less formalise the arguments as might a logician so as to enable further reasoning over the responses. By the same token, without some formalisation, further automated processing for reasoning is infeasible. The latter is rather important given the sheer amount and complexity of information users can submit. As most contributors are not trained logicians or computer scientists, they cannot be expected to provide systematic, formal, machine-readable arguments. Given this, we must attempt to bridge the "gap" between the deliberative inputs that the respondents provide and the systematic, formal representations that can be used for further automated processing such as for reasoning. To this end, the IMPACT Project and the SCT use a formal theory of argumentation using Argumentation Schemes.

We briefly outline a formal theory of arguments and argumentation schemes using simplified examples to give a flavour of the main ideas. We initially outline familiar notions of deductive and defeasible arguments. These are related to Argumentation Frameworks (AF), which reason with arguments at an abstract and formal level and which can be implemented and used to calculate sets of consistent arguments. A key problem is to bridge between the arguments that people use and AFs. We address this problem with Argumentation Schemes (AS), which are accessible, prototypical reasoning patterns. After this review, we return to discuss how the SCT uses and presents policy-making arguments.

Arguments and Argumentation Frameworks

Arguments generally are understood as premises followed by a claim; we say that we infer the claim from the premises. In Classical Logic, we can have the following argument, where All men are mortal and Socrates is a man are premises and Socrates is mortal is the claim.

All men are mortal and Socrates is a man, so Socrates is mortal.

In this deductive argument, where the premises are true, the claim must follow; additional statements would not change this inference.

There are other arguments in which the claim only presumptively or usually follows from the premises; we refer to these as defeasible arguments. For instance, someone may present the following argument (A):

A was a Quaker, so Nixon was a pacifist.

Others may dispute (A) with (B)-(D), arguing:

B Nixon was a Republican, so Nixon was not a pacifist. C Nixon was not born in Pennsylvania, so Nixon was not a Quaker. D Nixon never mentioned Quakerism, so Nixon was not a Quaker.

The claim (B) is contrary to the claim of (A), while claims of (C) and (D) are contrary to the premise of (A).

The arguments we have presented so far we call the level of fully instantiated arguments in the sense that all the predicates (e.g. being a Republican or mentioning Quakerism) and terms (e.g. Nixon or Quaker ) are explicitly represented; that is, we have sentences that human users can understand and process in the argument. To automatically process sentences, we need a formal, computational representation of the sentences and of the arguments.

One formal level of representation is provided by Argumentation Frameworks (AF) [START_REF] Dung | On the acceptability of arguments and its fundamental role in nonmonotonic reasoning, logic programming and n-person games[END_REF][START_REF] Prakken | An abstract framework for argumentation with structure arguments[END_REF], which have been shown to formally represent and reason with inconsistency and defeasibility. Here we provide some of the intuitive ideas behind AFs. At this level of representation, we abstract from the particular contents of the arguments to view arguments as nodes (this is a move similar to how Classical Propositional Logic abstracts from the particular contents of propositions) and represent the attack relations between the arguments, where attack is derived from a notion of contrariness: since (B) has a contrary of (A), we say that (B) attacks (A); similarly, (C) attacks (A) and (D) attacks (A). In AFs, the attack relation is viewed as an arc between nodes. Given an AF, the arguments and counter-arguments can be represented as a graph. Moreover, conditions can be given for which nodes "survive" attack. For example, since neither C nor D are attacked, they "survive"; they both attack (A), so (A) is eliminated; (A) and (B) attack one another, but (A) has been eliminated, so (B) "survives". The result is that we have a set of arguments which are consistent, namely {(B), (C), (D)}, which we refer to as an extension. Maximal consistent positions are called preferred extensions of the framework; in a policy-making context, preferred extensions may be understood as policy positions. While in this simple example, AFs may appear as more technically complex than required, where we deal with many nodes in attack relations, the strength of the formalisation, which has been implemented, comes to the fore.

Argumentation Schemes

For the purposes of the SCT, we cannot expect that respondents in the survey are familiar with expressing themselves in terms of deductive or defeasible arguments, in identifying contrary statements, or in providing ways of attacking arguments. On the other hand, we do not wish to allow entirely unconstrained arguments as discussed in section 2. Yet, the arguments must be understandable to the respondents in the survey. To navigate between the formal and informal yet provide an accessible format for survey respondents, we use argumentation (AS), of which there are many sorts [START_REF] Walton | Argumentation Schemes[END_REF]. Here, we consider two ASs, Practical Reasoning (as in [START_REF] Atkinson | Practical reasoning as presumptive argumentation using action based alternating transition systems[END_REF]) and Expert Opinion. Practical Reasoning relates to determining what people should do in a given situation, which is often central to policy-making consultations; Expert Opinion is what is often used to back up or support particular premises of an argument. We outline each of these schemes in terms of two levels, schematic and instantiated, adding further levels in section 6. Other schemes may also be relevant such as Argument from Analogy, or Ad Homenim, among others [START_REF] Walton | Argumentation Schemes[END_REF].

Schematically, the Practical Reasoning argumentation scheme is:

-Premise 1a: The current circumstances are R; -Premise 2a: Doing action A realises goal G; -Premise 3a: The goal G promotes value V; -Claim: We should do action A.

The scheme is instantiated when we provide ground terms for the variables R, A, G and V. For example, concerning a policy-making discussion about a ban on fox hunting, the following argument may be put forth: 6-Premise 1a: The ban on fox hunting negatively affects the livelihoods of those who make a living from fox hunting; -Premise 2a: Repealing the ban on fox hunting creates more jobs in the countryside; -Premise 3a: Creating more jobs in the countryside promotes prosperity.

-Claim: We should repeal the ban on fox hunting. This may be one of several arguments put forth in favour of this claim.

The Expert Opinion argumentation scheme may be used to argue for or against a particular statement of another scheme, which we give as a template and then as an instantiated example.

-Premise 1b: E is an expert in subject domain S -Premise 2b: S contains proposition A; -Premise 3b: E asserts that it is true that A; -Claim: A We connect our argumentation schemes -the claim of this Expert Opinion argument is Premise 1a of the previous Practical Reasoning argument. Other premises of the Practical Reasoning argument might also find support from an expert. For illustration, we use made up individuals and domain knowledge.

-Premise 1b: Professor James is an expert on UK rural economic research.

-Premise 2b: UK rural economics research contains the proposition that the ban on fox hunting negatively affects the livelihoods of those who make a living from fox hunting. -Premise 3b: Professor James asserts that it is true that the ban on fox hunting negatively affects the livelihoods of those who make a living from fox hunting. -Claim: The ban on fox hunting negatively affects the livelihoods of those who make a living from fox hunting.

Given these arguments, one might be persuaded to repeal the ban on fox hunting. Alternatively, one might object to particular statements within the arguments, thereby denying that the presumptive claim -that the ban on fox hunting should be repealed -follows; such objections are often presented as questions which, if answered negatively, represent objections to a statement in an argument and so imply an attack on the argument. For instance, one might object to Premise 1b, claiming that Professor James is not an expert on UK rural economic research; one might then support this claim by showing that he has not been a member of any professional research organisation for 10 years and has no qualification. Or, one might object to Premise 3a, citing research that jobs which are created in the countryside are so low paying that they are only marginally better than government support, and thereby do not promote prosperity. For each argumentation scheme there are a range of objections (see [START_REF] Walton | Argumentation Schemes[END_REF] and [START_REF] Atkinson | Practical reasoning as presumptive argumentation using action based alternating transition systems[END_REF]). Note in particular, that the argumentation schemes provide clear, fixed, and fine-grained "discussion points", such as those concerning current circumstances, actions, goals, values, expertise, domains, and so on; objections are directed at these points specifically. It is this aspect of argumentation which structures and makes coherent the policy-making. In this way, it returns very specific information to the policy analyst about exactly what respondents object to.

To this point, we have set the context of the SCT and some of the formal technology that it uses. In the next section, we present an overview of a current implementation of the SCT. Then, in the following section, we outline how argumentation schemes are further analysed so as to support fine-grained argumentation about policy-making.

A Prototype Structured Online Survey Tool

In developing the SCT, the Practical Reasoning argumentation scheme is central, since all policy proposals are based upon a justification of what to do on a specific issue [START_REF] Atkinson | Practical reasoning as presumptive argumentation using action based alternating transition systems[END_REF]. Moreover, as we have discussed, the Practical Reasoning argumentation scheme is related to and supported by other schemes (e.g. Expert Opinion), which in turn may be supported by still other schemes, thus requiring a network of interrelated schemes. In this section, we discuss elements of a current prototype online application, Parmenides developed in [START_REF] Cartwright | Digital Decision-Making: Using Computational Argumentation to Support Democratic Processes[END_REF], to illustrate some of the interactions between the system and respondents 7 ; future, richer SCT implementations, as discussed below, will improve upon this prototype, drawing on evaluation studies from [START_REF] Cartwright | Digital Decision-Making: Using Computational Argumentation to Support Democratic Processes[END_REF]. We indicate the initial presentation of the argument and sample information that leads the respondent through a structured investigation of his views on the proposed policy. While the system is highly structured, it also allows respondents to introduce their own additional information, which can be used in later iterations of the consultative process.

We consider the question of whether or not to repeal the ban on fox hunting in the UK as provided on the Parmenides website. In responding to the survey, the user is led through a series of screens of information, each screen presenting some particular aspect of the debate. The initial screen presents the argument for a particular action as proposed by the government, using the Practical Reasoning scheme of the fox hunting debate above.

Our example is simplified as the implementation allows more complex expression of the current circumstances, a range of goals, and various expressions of the promotion of a value by a goal. For example, rather than one proposition for the statement of current circumstances, Parmenides presents several (based on the ePetition on fox hunting):

The ban gives succor to animal rights extremists; The ban ignores the findings of a government enquiry; The ban prejudices those who enjoy hunting with dogs; Less humane methods of controlling fox population have been introduced; The ban affects the livelihoods of those who make a living from hunting.

The argumentation scheme can have a number of propositions as premises, but there can only be one action that is the claim.

The argumentation scheme gives us a structured presentation of the initial state of the elements of the topic which is being surveyed. This leads to subsequent screens that solicit the respondents' views on particular aspects of the argument. Where a premise is complex, each proposition can be investigated independently. In particular, the respondent is asked questions about each proposition of each portion of the argumentation scheme, choosing whether he agrees, disagrees, or the question is not applicable. By doing so, the respondent indicates precisely what he accepts in connection with the initial argument. For instance, after the initial argument is given, the user will have a screen with some of the following questions about the starting circumstances:

-Does the ban give succor to animal rights extremists? -Does the ban ignore the findings of a government enquiry? -Does the ban prejudice those who enjoy hunting with dogs? -Have less humane methods of controlling fox population been introduced? -Does the ban affect the livelihoods of those who make a living from hunting?

Answering "yes" endorses a statement from the initial argument, while "no" registers disagreement with the argument on a specific point.

Where the respondent indicates "no", he is led to further screens that examine the justification for the particular proposition and offer the respondent ways to object to it, for example, resorting to the Expert Opinion scheme, as discussed above. The survey ends when the respondent has answered all the relevant questions and submitted his answers. At each stage along the way, the respondent has the option to introduce novel elements, which are submitted to the system developers for consideration in future surveys.

In the next section, we discuss theoretical developments to advance the SCT.

Advancing a Structured Online Survey Tool

To advance the SCT, we must analyse additional argumentation schemes, identify interconnections between them, and decompose them into their fundamental expressions as well as formalise the expressions so we can compute with them.

As this is ongoing work, we briefly sketch some of the directions.

Additional Argumentation Schemes

Part of our current research is directed at spelling out additional arguments and their relationships as may be required for policy-making. Over the course of the presentation of the survey, various statements found in the policy proposal may require additional, appropriate justification. For instance, while the statement concerning livelihoods might be justified by an expert opinion, a statement such as "The ban prejudices those who enjoy hunting with dogs" might instead require justification from survey data since it is not sufficient for one individual to report his opinion on the matter. Similarly, values such as "economic freedom", "animal welfare", or "human rights" may be justified following an Argument from Commitment, for example, citing a government's manifesto in which the government commits to upholding a value. Thus, we must find the relevant set of argumentation schemes for policy-making.

Another aspect of current work is to decompose existing schemes into central and subsidiary schemes. As we have indicated, statements in the policy require different sorts of justifications. One family of justification concerns the sources of information [START_REF] Walton | Argumentation Schemes[END_REF] such as Expert Opinion, Position to Know, Citation, Witness Testimony, Perception, Popular Opinion, and others. In our view, such schemes are related to a root argumentation scheme, which we refer to as Argument from Credible Source: E is a credible source in subject domain S; S contains proposition A; E asserts that it is true that A; therefore, A. The idea is that there are different ways to establish the premises using another argument such as Expert Opinion, Position to Know, and so on. In other words, there are levels of justification, giving rise to a tree-like structure.

Another aspect of the decomposition of argumentation schemes is the elaboration of a particular scheme, especially with respect to implicit or presupposed information as indicated by the objections. While some objections are directed at the truth or accuracy of statements given in the initial position, other objections ask whether there are alternatives, for example, Are there alternative ways of realising the same goal? or Does doing the action have a side effect which demotes some other value? For such objections, it is not sufficient simply to state that there are alternatives, but that there must be additional justification why those alternatives negatively impact on the initial position.

Towards a Formalisation of Argumentation Schemes

Argumentation schemes can be expressed at several levels of representation, from abstraction to instantiated. We have identified four key levels, partially indicated in section 4.2, each of which is needed to formulate the schemes so we can compute with them, for example, in a logic programming language such as Prolog. Given the focus of this paper and that our analysis is ongoing, we give only a flavour of this work, leaving aside many details, issues, and elaborations.

In section 4.2, we discussed two schemes; here we refer to the Expert Opinion scheme. At the most abstract level, the argument is taken as a whole -there is no differentiation between premises or claim, nor identification of predicates or terms. At the next level, we distinguish premises and the claim, e.g. Premise 1b: Professor James is an expert on UK rural economic research. Note that at this level, the premise is but an unanalysed string. At the next schematic level, we identify the predicate and variable terms in a pseudo-logical form: is-anexpert-on(E,D), where E is an individual and D is a domain. Finally, where we substitute variables for instantiated terms, we have an instantiated level: is-anexpert-on(Professor-James, UK-rural-economic-research). We can compute with these different representations.

The other statements in the Expert Opinion scheme are analysed into predicates and terms. For example, inDomain(T, negAffect(B,L)), which instantiated, gives us a expression about the negative affect of the ban on fox hunting to livelihoods, which is true in the domain of UK rural economic research; as well, we have asserts(E, negAffect(B,L)), which is true where an instantiation of E asserts the statement about the ban on fox hunting. For the problem domain, additional predicates will be needed. From such predicates, we can construct a knowledge base as well as arguments according to the schemes. For example, Expert Opinion is the rule holds(A) ← [expert(E,D), inDomain(D,A), asserts(E,A), not untrustworthy(E), not notCredible(E,D)], meaning that A holds where an expert in a domain asserts A, unless the expert is untrustworthy or not credible.

Although a range of schemes have been identified [START_REF] Walton | Argumentation Schemes[END_REF], research to systematically create formal representations has only recently begun [START_REF] Wyner | Argument schemes for legal case-based reasoning[END_REF][START_REF] Gordon | The carneades model of argument and burden of proof[END_REF][START_REF] Prakken | On the nature of argument schemes[END_REF]. In this way, our work furthers research on argumentation as well as e-participation.

Conclusion

In this paper we have outlined a Structured Online Consultation tool, which is to be used for the policy consultation phase of the policy-making process. We have described current policy-making tools in use in the UK and the USA along with several limitations. Various tools in the IMPACT Project, the SCT among them, are designed to address these limitations using current web technologies and state-of-the-art computational argumentation techniques. The SCT uses formalised argumentation schemes which enable defeasible reasoning such as found in policy consultations, where respondents may disagree. A current prototype implementation was outlined. In the final section, we indicated some aspects of our richer, interconnected, and formal analysis of argumentation schemes.

In future work, we will formally specify the argumentation to be used in the SCT, which will then be implemented in the tool. The tool will also be used and tested in "real world" settings by policy-making organisations, comparing and contrasting the existing tools to the SCT along with taking further guidance on developments of tools for policy making.

All websites accessed March

29, 2011. 2 http://publicreadingstage.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/ (archive only) http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/secretariat_general/citizens_initiative/

http://expertnet.wikispaces.com/ http://regulationroom.org/

http://lexpop.org/

Derived from an ePetition on fox hunting http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/huntingactrepeal/.

http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/ ~parmenides/

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the FP7-ICT-2009-4 Programme, IMPACT Project, Grant Agreement Number 247228. The work represents the views of the authors and not necessarily the project.


Rony Medaglia
email: rm.caict@cbs.dk

eParticipation Research: a Longitudinal Overview

Keywords: eParticipation, eDemocracy, literature review

This paper provides an update of the existing eParticipation research state of the art, and a longitudinal analysis of the development of the eParticipation field based on a shared framework of analysis. Drawing on a literature search covering the period from April 2006 to March 2011 included, 123 articles are identified, analysed and classified within the categories of eParticipation actors, activities, contextual factors, effects, and evaluation. Findings show that the field has a high level of dynamism, as focuses on eParticipation activities, contextual factors and effects have shifted in time, sometimes in counterintuitive directions. Drawing on the analysis, the conclusion section provides inputs for a research agenda. These include the need to move beyond a technological perspective, and encouraging the ongoing shift of research focus from government to citizens and other stakeholders.

Introduction

The growing body of knowledge on eParticipation in recent years has increased the complexity of the research field. Contributions focusing on the emergence of new forms of citizen participation in political activity through information and communication technologies (ICT) come from a wide range of disciplines [START_REF] Macintosh | eParticipation: The Research Gaps[END_REF]. eParticipation research includes perspectives from political science, sociology, management, psychology, economics, together with contributions that are more technical in nature. Such a varied scenario of disciplinary backgrounds is also accompanied by a variety of methodological stances, and normative perspectives characterizing eParticipation research [START_REF] Parvez | Towards building an integrated perspective on e-democracy[END_REF].

As a result of this complexity, a number of attempts at scoping the research field have been carried out so far [START_REF] Macintosh | eParticipation: The Research Gaps[END_REF], [START_REF] Freschi | A Tale of Six Countries: eParticipation Research from an Administration and Political Perspective[END_REF][START_REF] Medaglia | The challenged identity of a field: The state of the art of eParticipation research[END_REF][START_REF] Saebø | The shape of eParticipation: Characterizing an emerging research area[END_REF][START_REF] Sanford | Characterizing eParticipation[END_REF]. These contributions aim at providing comprehensive views of the research area, and to enable the research community to share a set of epistemological tools in order to identify gaps and advance the research field. Nevertheless, since eParticipation can be considered a field that is still on its way towards maturity, there is a need to refine the scenario of the state of the art of research available. Existing reviews, being the first ones, still fail to build on top of each other in a systematic way. This can represent a relevant burden as far as understanding the direction that the eParticipation research field is taking in time is concerned.

This paper aims at updating the understanding of the scenario of eParticipation research, while providing a longitudinal analysis of its developments. In particular, this review mainly draws on the approach adopted in Saebø et al. [START_REF] Saebø | The shape of eParticipation: Characterizing an emerging research area[END_REF].

The article is structured as follows. The following section will present the method used and the strategy adopted for collecting the literature data on eParticipation research. Section 3 outlines and discusses the limitations of the study. Section 4 will introduce the categories used for the literature analysis. Section 5 will present the findings, distinguishing between five main categories of research focus: eParticipation actors, eParticipation activities, contextual factors, eParticipation effects, and eParticipation evaluation. The conclusion section summarizes the contribution of the paper and provides inputs for an eParticipation research agenda.

Method

This paper draws on the analysis of the most recent contributions on eParticipation. The literature search includes all eParticipation-related research contributions published in international journals and conferences in the period from April 2006 to March 2011 included.

The search was conducted via EBSCO, ISI Web of Knowledge, and IEEE Explore databases, in line with the guidelines provided by Webster and Watson [START_REF] Zeithaml | Service quality delivery through web sites: A critical review of extant knowledge[END_REF]. This approach has been adopted in order to capture what are deemed to be all the internationally relevant research contributions, coming from established journals and conferences. The three databases index more than 8,000 journals in the fields of natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities, including important public administration journals, such as Government Information Quarterly and Public Administration Review, and the top journals in the Information Systems field. Relevant conferences include, among others, the DEXA cluster (including EGOV and ePart conferences), and the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS). A separate search was conducted through the AIS Electronic Library (AISeL), in order to include articles from the proceedings of the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) and the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS).

The literature review carried out in this article draws on the selection strategy adopted in Saebø et al. [START_REF] Saebø | The shape of eParticipation: Characterizing an emerging research area[END_REF]. Therefore, in order to retrieve a first comprehensive group of research articles related to eParticipation, the literature databases listed above have been searched using the following sets of keywords in the abstract and the title:

1. eDemocracy, using additional search phrases: eDemocracy, electronic democracy, democracy and Internet, democracy and information system, digital democracy. 2. eParticipation, using additional search phrases: eParticipation, electronic participation, eGovernment and participation, eGovernance and participation, eConsultation, ePetition.

3. eInclusion, using additional search phrase: digital divide and participation (within the results of "digital divide", since "digital divide" only returned more than 450 hits)1.

The keywords used are intended to cover the topic area of ICT and democratic participation, including research contributions that do not explicitly use the term eParticipation. A first keyword search was performed in the period between July and October 2008, covering all publications in the period from April 2006, which is the first month not covered by the previous literature review by Saebø et al. [5], to October 2008 (included). A second keyword search was performed in March 2011, covering the period from November 2008 to March 2011. The approximate 500 bibliographical items retrieved through the keyword search had their titles and abstracts scanned, in order to identify contributions clearly falling under the scope of eParticipation. eParticipation was referred to as the use of IT to support democratic decision-making. This definition of eParticipation draws on the one provided by Macintosh [START_REF] Macintosh | Characterizing e-participation in policy-making[END_REF], where eParticipation is related to the issues of enabling opportunities for consultation and dialogue between government and citizens by using a range of IT tools. The definition provided by Macintosh [START_REF] Macintosh | Characterizing e-participation in policy-making[END_REF] has been also extended to include eVoting, that is the use of ICT to support the democratic process of voting. As a result, 123 full text articles were retrieved, analysed and classified by the author, according to the categories described. It was possible for articles to be included in different categories, therefore the total number of category occurrences is higher than the number of articles.

Limitations

A number of limitations in this approach have to be taken into account. First, the scope of the literature search includes only contributions written in English, which implies that significant pieces of research on eParticipation that are written in languages other than English have not been taken into account. Such a limitation is significant if we consider that, in theory, a relevant portion of eParticipation research at national and local level can be published in national languages other than English.

Second, while the databases reviewed can be easily argued to be among the most comprehensive ones, the literature scan did not include some academic sources where eParticipation research can appear, such as the proceedings of the European Conference on E-Government, and the International Conference on E-Government.

Third, the choice of keywords might be considered as incomplete and therefore overlooking research that could be argued to fall within the domain of eParticipation. While the bias introduced by the choice of any limited set of keywords -as the one by Saebø et al. [START_REF] Saebø | The shape of eParticipation: Characterizing an emerging research area[END_REF] -is unavoidable, the advantage of using the same set of keywords at different times has to be underlined, as it provides a robust foundation for longitudinal comparison.

Last, the classification process, following the categories presented in the next section, has been carried out by the author only, trying to subjectively replicate the underlying criteria of the distribution of articles between the categories emerging in Saebø et al. [START_REF] Saebø | The shape of eParticipation: Characterizing an emerging research area[END_REF], without external aid from other researchers. While this is clearly a limitation that can impact the validity of the findings, there are examples of well-cited reviews in high level outlets that have followed the same approach [START_REF] Yildiz | E-government research: Reviewing the literature, limitations, and ways forward[END_REF].

Classification of the Research Domain

The main categories used to classify and capture the development of the eParticipation field were initially drawn from the model of the field presented by Saebø et al. [START_REF] Saebø | The shape of eParticipation: Characterizing an emerging research area[END_REF], to ensure a good degree of continuity and longitudinal comparability in the analysis of the development of the eParticipation research field.

The list of categories in the model, without reference to the relationship between them, is here adopted as a guideline. Each category refers to a focus adopted by the research analysed, namely: The range of categories has been expanded when new contributions in the sample analyzed could not fit into the existing categories. This resulted in introducing the actor category of researchers and scholars, as also suggested by [START_REF] Ricciardi | Widening the Disciplinary Scope of eParticipation[END_REF], and the evaluation category of transparency and openness. Each article has been assigned to one or more categories, depending on the main research contribution(s).

*
The following section provides a presentation of the findings from the analysis of the literature carried out using the method and the classification categories described.

Findings and Discussion

This section outlines the eParticipation field by exploring international eParticipation research contributions related to the following categories: actors, activities, contextual factors, effects, and evaluation.

Table 1 provides an overview of the distribution of all bibliographical items on the categories of analysis. The total number of contributions in each period is higher than the correspondent total N of articles, as each article can include more contributions to different categories. The research field of eParticipation is growing rapidly, even though it can still be considered to be in its early stages. The previous literature scan, based on all years of available publications until March 2006, has discussed a total of 93 articles in its findings [START_REF] Saebø | The shape of eParticipation: Characterizing an emerging research area[END_REF]. The period of this study, April 2006-March 2011, features 123 eParticipation-related contributions. In other words, since the last literature overview, an average of almost two new eParticipation studies has been published every month.

The picture of the international eParticipation research scenario first provides a number of interesting insights into the current state and future development of the field, when we look at the changes in focus through time.

Overall, research on eParticipation has experienced a big shift in focus away from activities, towards the study of eParticipation effects and evaluation. This has happened within the context of a general redistribution of focuses, resulting in a more balanced picture of contributions focusing respectively on actors, activities, contextual factors, and effects and evaluation. The emergence of a balance between focuses on different aspects of eParticipation can be interpreted as a move towards a higher degree of maturity of the field: different dimensions of the eParticipation phenomenon are covered by a significant number of contributions, with neither side suffering from exceptional neglect. On the other hand, the impressive growth of contributions focusing on eParticipation effects and evaluation, which has tripled, can be linked to the progress of the many eParticipation initiatives started earlier on. As eParticipation projects move towards completion, research appears to move away from the description of activities and to focus on the evaluation of the impacts of such activities.

eParticipation Actors

Even though it is now the least focused on aspect in the sample analyzed, the focus on eParticipation actors has remained stable through time, in absolute terms. Moreover, the overall balance between different types of actors (government institutions, politicians, and voluntary organizations) has remained almost identical, with the exception of an increased focus on citizens. Without surprise, citizens and government institutions are the main object of the majority of the contributions focusing on actors. It appears that almost all of the overall slight increase of focus on actors in recent research is due to more studies investigating citizens as the main actors in eParticipation processes. Such a finding is in line with the rise of research interest on citizen-initiated eParticipation that would be expected as a consequence of the diffusion of web 2.0 applications occurred in the last five years. Web 2.0 applications, such as social networking services (SNS), wikis, and blogs, can in fact be argued to have the potential of putting the citizen as user of government services at the centre of ICT-enabled participatory processes [START_REF] Saebø | The Role of Social Networking Services in eParticipation[END_REF]. Our analysis can provide some evidence of this shift, even if it is still in its nascent phase. On the other hand, surprisingly few contributions focus specifically on the design, adoption, management, and use of web 2.0 tools in an eParticipation setting. Most of the studies still investigate, for instance, traditional institutional websites and government-run discussion fora. Overall, a large part of the body of research appears to still reflect a top-down approach to eParticipation that has government, and not citizens, as the main focus.

Moreover, it is worth noting that there is a persistent neglect of the role of researchers and scholars in eParticipation activities. The design phase in eParticipation initiatives, as an example, is crucial, and there is little doubt that researchers can play an important part in it [START_REF] Sanford | Designing the e-participation artefact[END_REF]. Moreover, the benefits of adopting an engaged scholarship perspective in research [START_REF] Van De Ven | Engaged scholarship: a guide for organizational and social research[END_REF], by involving practitioners and stakeholders in the research process, especially in research on IT in government [START_REF] Medaglia | Engaged Scholarship in Research on Information Technology in Government: Stuck in the Ivory Tower?[END_REF], should clearly trigger the need to include researchers as a key actor in eParticipation activities.

eParticipation Activities

Focus on eParticipation activities, overall, has decreased. Within this focus, studies on eActivism, eCampaining and ePetitioning are still at the periphery of the body of research on eParticipation activities. The focus on online political discourse and online decision making has decreased in both absolute and relative terms in recent years.

The sample analyzed shows that the use of ICT for voting is receiving increasing attention. While other "E"-political activities (activism, campaigning, petitioning) further decreased their already weak focus from research, eVoting appears to be the only eParticipation activity that has increased its appeal to researchers through time. Nevertheless, it is to be noted that the majority of the contributions on eVoting consist of design proposals for voting systems, while only a few are research contributions in a strict sense.

Contextual Factors

The number of studies focusing on contextual factors affecting eParticipation has remained identical, with 42 contributions focusing on this aspect in the two periods compared. The main change occurred in time has been the concentration of almost all contributions that deal with contextual factors on the role of underlying technologies, and of governmental organization, at the expense of all other factors. In the first period of eParticipation research a number of independent variables was explored in the literature to a more balanced extent. The impact of a wider range of factors was focused on, including policy and legal issues, information availability, infrastructure, and accessibility. Through time, it is striking to see how aspects such as accessibility and information availability have disappeared from the research agenda, leaving room for contributions focusing only on how technologies and governmental organization as independent variables affect eParticipation processes.

This steady strong focus by researchers on the role of government in eParticipation is in line with findings related to research on key actors as outlined above, and highly relevant as far as the discrepancy between these findings and the growing visibility of the web 2.0 discourse is concerned. Again, it seems as the increasingly popular stress on the central role of citizens as users, that many see as brought about by the concept of web 2.0, does not match the actual research focus of eParticipation.

eParticipation Effects and Evaluation

The most dramatic shift in the overall research focus has occurred in relation to the study of eParticipation effects and to eParticipation evaluation. First, the share of contributions focusing on eParticipation effects and evaluation has grown remarkably in the last five years. Second, the distribution of focuses within this share, which mainly concentrated on civic engagement effects, is now much more evenly balanced, with different types of evaluation studies and different types of eParticipation effects focused on to comparable extents.

As far as effects are concerned, recent research shows a vast increase of the share of contributions focusing on the deliberative effects of eParticipation, which was neglected in previous years. There has been a shift of focus from the sheer amount of participation towards a deeper insight into the impacts of ICT on the quality of democratic discussion. This can also be used as an interpretative key for looking at eParticipation evaluation research. The share of contributions focusing on the evaluation of eParticipation has, overall, almost doubled. Within this share, studies focusing on quantity of eParticipation have decreased and, at the same time, there has been a remarkable growth of contributions assessing the tone and style of online activities. These two phenomena can be interpreted as two sides of a single trend: as the focus on deliberative effects increases, so does the use of methods of evaluation that assess the tone and style of online discourses occurring within deliberation activities. Last, a new category of studies evaluating the degree of transparency and openness of eParticipation platforms has been introduced, to account for the emergence of this type of focus within the area of eParticipation evaluation studies. A relevant number of contributions focus on evaluating the extent to which eParticipation initiatives result in increased transparency and openness of actors, policies, and processes.

Conclusions

This article has provided an overview and a longitudinal analysis of the development of the rapidly growing research field of eParticipation, drawing on previous literature analysis work [START_REF] Saebø | The shape of eParticipation: Characterizing an emerging research area[END_REF]. The analysis of the most recent literature contributions, based on 123 selected research articles from internationally acknowledged sources, has led to identifying the transformation occurring in the field, regarding research focuses and approaches. The choice of drawing on an existing framework of analysis of the literature provides the eParticipation research community with a first longitudinal analysis of the field, not only to capture the characteristics of this area in a given point in time, but also to enable a characterization of the field development through time.

Findings point out that, overall, the eParticipation research area shows great dynamism. The number of contributions in the field has grown remarkably, and encompasses a wide range of perspectives. The research agenda has changed in time, and it did so radically in some aspects. Some changes, in particular, are of counterintuitive nature, when compared with existing popular assumptions on the impacts of ICT on participation, and the transformation of democratic systems. This is the case, for instance, of studies on eParticipation activities, contextual factors, and effects. Such key areas, which represent the core of a research field, have experienced dramatic shifts. Some of them can be argued to be, to some extent, more predictable or less surprising than others.

The findings summarized in the previous section can be read as a basis for providing inputs to a research agenda, grounded on the gaps, trends and potentials of current eParticipation research.

Focus on a wider range of contextual factors beyond the technological ones

It can be argued that one of the indicators of the maturity of a research field is its internal balance between different focuses on actors, activities, contextual factors, and effects. In the eParticipation research field we are witnessing, overall, a move towards a more balanced distribution of focuses as far as these macro-categories are concerned. Within the domains of actors, activities, contextual factors, and effects, this is also happening as far as eParticipation effects is concerned. On the other hand it is striking to see how, within research on contextual factors affecting eParticipation, the field has moved from featuring a wide range of factors to focus on, to an almost exclusive focus on underlying technology determinants. While contributions often formally highlight the dangers of technological determinism, and call for a deeper, more sophisticated view on contextual factors affecting eParticipation processes, the large majority of studies that should do so have instead focused solely on technological determinants. Future research on eParticipation should revert this trend by including a stronger focus on important factors such as policy and legal issues, accessibility, and information availability. It is difficult to argue that traditional digital divide factors, such as the role of infrastructure or of information availability, will not play a role in eParticipation in the near future. As eParticipation initiatives spread in different countries, research should make an effort in diversifying the array of contextual factors that can explain the success or failure of IT initiatives aimed at improving citizen democratic participation.

Encourage the shift of research focus from government to citizens and other stakeholders.

The array of actors focused in eParticipation activities is to be extended. With the emergence of Web 2.0 platforms supporting eParticipation, theoretically citizens have the potential of becoming the main actors of eParticipation activities. Collaborative platforms, such as wikis, the horizontal distribution of communication channels in social networking services (SNS), and the emergence of platforms based on usergenerated content, ideally make it easier for citizens to coordinate, communicate, produce, and share political power vis-à-vis the traditional government institutions dedicated to decision-making. The amount of research attention on these new types of grassroots participatory experiences has increased in the past years, but it is still largely lagging behind the mushrooming of initiatives that are occurring in the real world, and the exponential boom in popularity of tools that carry this potential, such as in the examples of Twitter, Facebook, and the likes.

Moreover, the shift of focus from top-down, government-led towards bottom-up, citizen-led eParticipation initiatives must be accompanied by an extension of the range of actors to be focused on in research. It can be strongly argued that no longer do only government institutions, politicians, and citizens form the triangle of eParticipation activities, but that there are also voluntary organizations, industry players, and researchers themselves that are an important part of eParticipation processes. The need for digital participatory processes to be as inclusive as possible increases with the increase in complexity of the policy issues to be decided upon, and with the spread of the access to the technological capabilities that enable them.

Table 1 .

 1 Overview of eParticipation contributions.

	Category	Up to Mar 2006	Apr 2006-Mar
		(N=93) [5]	2011 (N=123)
	Citizens	9	13
	Government institutions	8	8
	Voluntary organizations	7	6
	Politicians	5	5
	Researchers and scholars	n/a	1
	eParticipation actors (total)	29	33
	eVoting	13	11
	Online decision making	18	8
	Online political discourse	15	7
	eConsultation	8	5
	eActivism	9	3
	eCampaigning	3	2
	ePetitioning	2	1
	eParticipation activities (total)	68	37
	Underlying technologies	11	27
	Accessibility	8	0
	Infrastructure	8	2
	Governmental organization	7	12
	Information availability	5	0
	Policy and legal issues	3	1
	Contextual factors (total)	42	42
	Civic engagement effects	8	9
	Democratic effects	3	9
	Deliberative effects	1	10
	Quantity of eParticipation	4	8
	Demographic of participants	1	5
	Tone and style in the online activities	1	7
	Transparency and openness	n/a	11
	eParticipation effects & evaluation (total)	18	59

Alternative spellings for some of the keywords were also used to maximize the literature coverage (e.g.: e-democracy; e.participation; e-petition, etc.)


Robin Effing
email: r.effing@utwente.nl

Jos Van Hillegersberg
email: j.vanhillegersberg@utwente.nl

Theo Huibers
email: t.w.c.huibers@utwente.nl

Social Media and Political Participation: Are Facebook, Twitter and YouTube democratizing our Political Systems?

Keywords: Social Media, Internet, Participation, Politics, Elections

This paper presents the results of a literature review in regard to Social Media and participation. Besides that, to understand the meaning and impact of Social Media on elections, we show field results from the 2010 and 2011 elections in the Netherlands. There are several challenges when it comes to engaging people in party politics. The current findings in literature show us that previous efforts to shape public participation with prior Internet tools did not meet expectations. With Social Media this could change, because participation seems to be the key concept that explains the difference between 'old' web and 'new' Social Media. In the Netherlands, Social Media did not significantly influence voting behaviour during the local elections (2010/2011). But, during the national elections (2010), politicians with higher Social Media engagement got relatively more votes within most political parties. In conclusion, we propose a future research agenda to study how political parties could benefit from Social Media to reinvent and improve the way they work with their members and volunteers.

Introduction

Recent years have seen a decline in non-profit community participation such as political party membership. Also, there are several challenges when it comes to engaging people in party politics [START_REF] Edelmann | eParticipation for Adolescent Citizens (in Austria) Introduction: eParticipation by Austrian Adolescents[END_REF][START_REF] Livingstone | Active participation or just more information? Information[END_REF]. Contrary to popular expectations, the rise of the Internet did not result in increased levels of public participation [START_REF] Davis | New media and fat democracy: the paradox of online participation[END_REF][START_REF] Van Dijk | The network society: social aspects of new media[END_REF]. On top of that, many political parties are afraid to lose control over their message when they delegate power and authority to the public [START_REF] Davis | New media and fat democracy: the paradox of online participation[END_REF][START_REF] Lilleker | Political Parties and Web 2.0: The Liberal Democrat Perspective[END_REF].

At the same time, Internet use by citizens is becoming more social and participatory. Today, social websites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Wikipedia, Flickr and YouTube are the number one activity on the web. As of April 2011, Facebook has approximately 600 million registered users and according to market researcher ComScore [START_REF] Ray | The Implications Of Consumers Spending More Time With Facebook Than Google[END_REF], people are spending more time on Facebook than on Google. The use of mobile Internet gave an additional boost to the use of Social Media. Organizations such as political parties are trying to keep up with this changing environment. Most of them are struggling to implement Social Media to their benefit. It seems that political parties are just riding the wave of Social Media without any strategy. Organizations tend to underestimate the implementation of Social Media because they do not understand them.

The opposite was true in the case of Obama's election campaign; it was, for a large part, systematically based on Social Media [START_REF] Christakis | Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives[END_REF][START_REF] Lutz | The social pulpit. Barack Obama's Social Media toolkit[END_REF][START_REF] Talbot | How Obama Really Did It: The social-networking strategy that took an obscure senator to the doors of the White House[END_REF][START_REF] Citron | Fulfilling Government 2.0's Promise with Robust Privacy Protections[END_REF][START_REF] Greengard | The First Internet President[END_REF][START_REF] Stirland | Propelled by Internet, Barack ObamaWins Presidency[END_REF][START_REF] Zhang | The Revolution Will be Networked[END_REF]. Next to his own website, Obama used fifteen Social Media sites to run his campaign. He understood the power of complementing offline work with an online campaign. He systematically linked the online community to offline activities such as fundraising [START_REF] Ren | Drawing Lessons from Obama for the European Context[END_REF]. Obama's use of Social Media was an important aspect of his overall campaign strategy. Another positive case was the campaign of Ségolène Royal during the French elections in 2007. She managed to connect with a massive online crowd [START_REF] Lilleker | Political Parties and Web 2.0: The Liberal Democrat Perspective[END_REF]. Due to her online campaign, party membership increased from 120,000 to 200,000 members [START_REF] Montero | Political e-mobilisation and participation in the election campaigns of Ségolène Royal (2007) and Barack Obama[END_REF]. 90% of increase had not been a member of a political party before. With examples of mass mobilizations such as civilian protests in Iran and other Middle-Eastern countries, it is safe to argue that Social Media are changing the game of politics.

While Social Media have the potential to dramatically change the relationships of individuals to society [START_REF] Lewis | Beyond participation to co-creation of meaning: mobile social media in generative learning communities[END_REF], we have to discover what Social Media mean and how to implement them for maximum benefits. There is no clear definition of Social Media, as we will indicate in a next section. Political parties often have traditional community structures. Organizations with such structures can probably benefit from Social Media since they depend on active member participation. Hence, we decided to perform a systematic literature review.

This paper aims to show the results of a literature review in regard to Social Media and participation. As one of the results of the literature review, we will further define Social Media and participation. We will also introduce some field results and a research agenda.

Literature review

A systematic literature review was conducted to deliver a broad overview of disciplines, authors and journals related to Social Media and participation. We used the electronic scientific databases ISI Web of Science, Picarta, Scopus, EBSCO INSPEC and EBSCO Business Source Elite. Various keywords were used to search those databases. The first keyword is "Social Media". The second keyword is "participation". We also used the following related terms for the concept of Social Media: "Social Internet", "Social Web", "Social Network Site(s)", "User Generated Content", "Web 2.0" and "Crowdsourcing". During the research, one search query was added because many retrieved articles included the keyword: "e-participation". Related terms of participation such as "engagement", "involvement" and "commitment" did not deliver additional results, and were left out. The next step was selecting relevant papers from the search results by analysing abstracts from retrieved records. We used a-priori selection criteria; for example, articles about user participation in system design were excluded. Some research disciplines were more frequently selected than others. Especially, social sciences are ahead of Social Media research. Some areas of interest are more frequently studied than others. Most of the publications relate to the topic of citizen participation, especially in local government. Several studies were carried out on local electronic participation [START_REF] Borge | Online and offline participation at the local level: A quantitative analysis of the Catalan Municipalities[END_REF][START_REF] Mambrey | From Participation to e-Participation: The German Case[END_REF]. Only 12 percent of all articles are about politics and democracy.

Based on the analysis of the articles from a political and public participation perspective, the following insights emerge.

Previous efforts to shape public participation with Internet tools did not meet expectations. There has been very little success with prior Social Media tools such as online discussion forums, chat and online surveys [START_REF] Phang | A Framework of ICT Exploitation for E-Participation Initiatives[END_REF][START_REF] Roeder | Public Budget Dialogue: An Innovative Approach to E-Participation[END_REF][START_REF] Stern | Web-based and traditional public participation in comprehensive planning: a comparative study[END_REF].

Many authors [23,...,34] address the issue of defining and measuring eparticipation. From the literature selection, no less than 13 different participation ladders are available and no consensus exists about them [START_REF] Grönlund | ICT Is Not Participation Is Not Democracy: eParticipation Development Models Revisited[END_REF][START_REF] Loukis | Evaluating Parliamentary e-Participation[END_REF][START_REF] Peristeras | Transforming E-government and E-participation[END_REF]. In general, the participation ladders define a certain degree of user participation, from informing to empowerment. Because of the inconsistent ways of defining and measuring participation in the literature, it is difficult to measure and compare e-participation. In the next section, we use the frequently cited participation ladder from Macintosh [START_REF] Grönlund | ICT Is Not Participation Is Not Democracy: eParticipation Development Models Revisited[END_REF][START_REF] Medaglia | Measuring the diffusion of eParticipation: A survey on Italian local government[END_REF][START_REF] Sommer | Participation 2.0: a Case Study of e-Participation within the New Zealand Government New Zealand New Zealand Abstract[END_REF]. In our opinion, Macintosh's model is most suitable for describing Social Media participation levels.

With the changing Internet environment, there are opportunities to involve and empower citizens in campaigns and work of representatives and government. This so called Crowdsourcing, is a major challenge, which needs a different perspective on citizens. It is necessary to change the perspective from content consumers to content producers (prosumers) [START_REF] Wei | Knowledge Production and Political Participation: Reconsidering the Knowledge Gap Theory in the Web 2.0 Environment[END_REF][START_REF] Rebillard | Promises unfulfilled? Journalism 2.0, user participation and editorial policy on newspaper websites[END_REF][START_REF] Brabham | Crowdsourcing the Public Participation Process for Planning Projects[END_REF][START_REF] Flew | Journalism as social networking: The Australian youdecide project and the 2007 federal election[END_REF]. In most cases, this change is difficult. It requires additional trust in the community. And, it turns out that only a minor group of users is responsible for almost all the contributions. So called super contributors [START_REF] Flew | Journalism as social networking: The Australian youdecide project and the 2007 federal election[END_REF]. Hence, this may result in creating a new political 'web' elite instead of an equal representation of citizens.

Another relevant topic, indicated in literature, is the concept of digital divide. Online political participation is not equally represented. Certain people are more interested. According to various authors [START_REF] Lilleker | Political Parties and Web 2.0: The Liberal Democrat Perspective[END_REF][START_REF] Hibberd | E-Participation, Broadcasting and Democracy in the UK[END_REF][START_REF] Moreira | E-Society and E-Democracy[END_REF][START_REF] Saglie | Size and e-Democracy: Online Participation in Norwegian Local Politics What Promotes or Inhibits Local Participation on[END_REF], the political active on the web are well-educated males with relatively high income and even relatively high age. But, the younger they are, the more they post and participate [START_REF] Wei | Knowledge Production and Political Participation: Reconsidering the Knowledge Gap Theory in the Web 2.0 Environment[END_REF]. In many cases the politically interested people online, are the same as the politically interested people offline.

Secondly, next to political and citizen participation, studies are available related to societal use and social behaviour. In the latter, for instance, findings support the idea that the use of Social Media increases social capital [START_REF] Brandtzaeg | Why People Use Social Networking Sites[END_REF][START_REF] Ellison | The Benefits of Facebook Friends: Social Capital and College Students' Use of Online Social Network Sites[END_REF][START_REF] Karahasanović | Co-creation and user-generated content-elderly people's user requirements[END_REF][START_REF] Tomai | Computers & Education Virtual communities in schools as tools to promote social capital with high schools students[END_REF][START_REF] Valenzuela | Is There Social Capital in a Social Network Site?: Facebook Use and College Students[END_REF][START_REF] Vergeer | Consequences of media and Internet use for offline and online network capital and well-being: A causal model approach[END_REF] that is related to political participation [START_REF] Zhang | The Revolution Will be Networked[END_REF].

As the participation research field is much broader than citizen participation, more research should be carried out in regard to political parties, their members and elections. With the insights of the literature review, we are able to define Social Media and participation.

Social media and participation defined

One of the first definitions of Social Media, published in scientific literature, comes from Kaplan and Haenlein [START_REF] Kaplan | Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media[END_REF]: "Social Media is a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content." This definition makes clear that Social Media is not a completely new generation of Internet tools. Social Media rely heavily on the concept of Web 2.0. "Web 2.0 is a term that was first used in 2004 to describe a new way in which software developers and end-users started to utilize the World Wide Web; that is, as a platform whereby content and applications are no longer created and published by individuals, but instead are continuously modified by all users in a participatory and collaborative fashion" [START_REF] Kaplan | Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media[END_REF].

Hence, it can be argued that the term Social Media is mainly a new label for existing technology. Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the World Wide Web, already expected this social use of the Internet from the start: "The Web is more a social creation than a technical one. It was designed for a social effect to help people work together" [START_REF] Berners-Lee | Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by Its Inventor[END_REF]. Kaplan and Haenlein emphasize, in their definition, that users can participate more actively in processes of organizations by using web technology.

Participation seems to be the key concept that explains the difference between 'old' web and 'new' Social Media, although basic tools for interaction such as chat and forum were available in the early days of the World Wide Web. The problem with the definition of Kaplan and Haenlein is that they do not include the power of underlying social networks with personal profiles, as pointed out by Boyd and Ellison [START_REF] Boyd | Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship[END_REF]. The media hype around the term Web 2.0 is decreasing. The trend is downhill. Today, people are talking about Social Media. The Google trend comparison in figure one illustrates this. A key factor of Web 2.0 and Social Media is participation. Therefore, let us define participation more precisely. Grönlund [START_REF] Grönlund | ICT Is Not Participation Is Not Democracy: eParticipation Development Models Revisited[END_REF] defines participation as "the specific activity of doing things together". Xie, Bo and Jaeger define political participation as "behaviours aimed at shaping governmental policy, either by influencing the selection of government personnel or by affecting their choices".

Macintosh [START_REF] Grönlund | ICT Is Not Participation Is Not Democracy: eParticipation Development Models Revisited[END_REF][START_REF] Medaglia | Measuring the diffusion of eParticipation: A survey on Italian local government[END_REF][START_REF] Sommer | Participation 2.0: a Case Study of e-Participation within the New Zealand Government New Zealand New Zealand Abstract[END_REF]] created a participation ladder with three stages of online participation, which is useful for explaining the Social Media phenomenon. First, there is e-Enabling. This is mainly about giving access and information to members, citizens or users. The second stage is e-Engaging. During this stage, people can interact with the organization and start a dialogue. People are being consulted for certain projects, decisions or activities for instance with forums and polls. The third stage is e-Empowering. This stage is about working together with users, members or citizens. Empowering them with responsibilities, tasks and options to collaborate with the organization.

Take the Lego Factory website for example: Lego fans can design, share and order their own virtually designed products. Or, Obama's followers making and sharing their own Obama related campaign video clips on YouTube [START_REF] Ren | Drawing Lessons from Obama for the European Context[END_REF]. This model makes clear that Web 2.0 is not a completely new kind of the web, but a new stage reached with higher user participation. With the current increasing use of Social Media, the user participation level can increase dramatically. This does not mean that e-Empowering was not possible during the beginning of the World Wide Web. Social Media is a new stage of development where users are more actively participating than ever.

With the rise of Social Media, politicians and government could create opportunities for political participation: enabling, engaging and empowering followers for various benefits.

Field study Dutch elections

To understand the meaning and impact of Social Media on political elections, we conducted a series of empirical research projects during the 2010 and 2011 elections in the Netherlands. Firstly, we were interested if there were empirical signs that Social Media usage by politicians has an effect on voting behaviour. By comparing Social Media engagement of political candidates on the one hand and the individual votes on the other hand we are able to calculate if there is a relationship between them.

As an accepted framework for measuring Social Media engagement is lacking and the participation ladder from Macintosh is too abstract for measuring, we decided to develop our own evaluation framework for Dutch elections, the: "Social Media Indicator" (SMI). This framework consists of a standardized way of measuring the Social Media participation of politicians and their interactivity with the public. This Social Media Indicator is a helpful tool in indicating the level of engagement of politicians in social media and the degree in which they interact with their followers on these media. The indicating questions from the Social Media Indicator are presented in table 2. In case of personal Hyves, how many friends? Does the politician have a profile at Twitter? Based on latest 200 tweets, how many retweets? In case of personal Twitter account, how many tweets? Based on latest 200 tweets, how many replies? In case of personal Twitter account, how many following? In case of personal Twitter account, how many followers? Does the politician have a profile at Facebook? In case of personal Facebook account, how many friends? In case of personal Facebook account, how many likes? Does the politician have a YouTube channel? How many videos are posted on this personal channel? Based on all videos, how many times are they watched? Based on all videos, how many comments? Based on this channel, how many subscribers?

Because of the large number of different Social Media, we did not try to cover all social media in our analysis. We thought it was more important to include the social media with the highest reach in the Netherlands. Hence, we included Hyves, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Hyves is still the largest social network site in the Netherlands. On top of that, we added personal blogs to the Social Media Indicator. Personal blogs from politicians are often used to connect to citizens and have a large reach.

By focusing on the measurement of contribution levels of the politician and counting interaction with others, we include all levels of participation (e-enabling, eengaging and e-empowerment). This current measurement system does not differentiate between these different levels of participation yet.

By observing the set of predefined standardized indicators, we can calculate a total SMI score for each politician in the Netherlands. This score is compared to the personal votes this politician got during elections. With this comparison, we are able to see if Social Media usage makes a difference within the party. Do party candidates engaged in Social Media get more votes than colleagues who do not? Statistically, we compare two variables, on the one hand the SMI score of a candidate, on the other hand the votes this particular candidate received. We use scatterplot diagrams and Spearman's rank correlation coefficient to find dependencies.

After applying the above method to three different elections in the Netherlands, the results are as follows. Social Media does not play a big role yet in the local state (2011) and municipality (council) elections (2010) in the Netherlands. The engagement levels of politicians were very low. Because of this low participation, it was very difficult to calculate correlations. When only two or three people of a party engage actively in social media, it does not make sense to compare them to a much larger group of inactive users.

During the national elections of the House of Representatives (Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal) of June 9, 2010 we got clear results because participation levels in Social Media were much higher. We calculated the SMI for all candidates (n = 676) and compared it to the votes. We excluded the first five candidates from every candidate list, because we assumed that politicians with high list positions have easy access to mass media such as television, radio and print media. In those cases, it is very difficult to isolate the effect of Social Media from other, more traditional media.

Within nine parties, out of sixteen, we found a positive significant correlation. Politicians with higher Social Media engagement got relatively more votes within most parties, as illustrated in table 3. The differences between parties could be a result of differences in target audience, content strategy and other factors, but these factors are not yet thoroughly explored.

Additionally, the higher scores for certain candidates could reflect that a party candidate has an already large social network in the real world. Nevertheless, there seems to be a powerful influence from Social Media on reaching and influencing voters.

To increase the value of our findings, we conducted a few qualitative, open faceto-face interviews with party members and board members of political parties.

Interviews held with the parties PvdD and CDA helped us to improve our understanding of the relationship between social media participation and votes. Measuring points that were exceptions could be explained by other influence factors. And, it seems that it makes a difference if politicians use Social Media with or without strategy.

Use of Social Media does not always result in a more effective political campaign. It heavily depends on how its use is designed, which emphasizes the need for further research.

Future research agenda

Political parties and similar non-profit organizations could benefit from Social Media to improve the way they work with their members and volunteers. However, the various ways to use Social Media and their effects on member participation are not well understood. Therefore, two research questions for further research are articulated.

RQ1: How can non-profit organizations -with community structures -such as political parties increase member participation by implementing Social Media? RQ2: What are the design principles for optimal implementation of Social Media, as a participation instrument, at non-profit organizations with traditional communities?

To answer these questions, we plan to conduct multiple longitudinal case studies. According to Waters et al [START_REF] Waters | Engaging stakeholders through social networking: How nonprofit organizations are using Facebook[END_REF], "longitudinal studies could offer insights into how organizations change their social networking strategies over time, and case studies should be conducted to help offer insights for other organizations based on efforts that have both succeeded and failed". In the near future, we will study the changing dynamics of the city council of a large Dutch municipality influenced by the participatory use of Social Media.

We will do a longitudinal study, comparing two variables: Social Media Participation (SMCP), and Offline Community Participation (OCP). The evaluation of both offline and online participation is a new and emerging area, which needs further research [START_REF] Macintosh | Evaluating how e-participation changes local participation[END_REF].

Our next goal is to design an evaluation framework for Social Media and community participation. Besides measuring of actual participation, it is important to look at social aspects of community participation as well, such as beliefs, attitudes and sense of community.

Our broader goal is to make clear to which extent Social Media can be used as a community-strengthening tool in non-profit organizations with community structures such as church, trade-unions and political parties. Therefore, in June 2011, we started a longitudinal case study at the Dutch parish H. Plechelmus from the Roman Catholic Church.

Figure 1 .

 1 Figure 1. Google trends: "Web 2.0" against "Social Media"

Figure 2 .

 2 Figure 2. Social Media evolution model

Table 1 .

 1 Table one shows the articles by topic. Articles by topic

	Topic category	Number of articles	Percentage of total
	Citizen participation 40	35 %
	Use and social	23	20 %
	behaviour
	Online community	14	12 %
	design
	Politics and	13	12 %
	democracy
	Other	23	20 %

Table 2 .

 2 Social Media Indicator Social Media Indicator (SMI) Does the politician maintain a personal Blog? In case of a Blog, how many replies? In case of a Blog, how many Blog Posts? Does the politician have a profile at Hyves? In case of personal Hyves, what is the total number of scraps? In case of personal Hyves, what is the view count?

Table 3 .

 3 SMI correlation with votes at Dutch national political parties

	Positive correlation	Positive correlation	No correlation
	> 0.5	> 0.3	<0.3
	Partij van de Dieren CDA	PVV
	Piratenpartij	PVDA	SGP
		Christenunie	TON
		SP	Nieuw NL
		TON	MenS
		Lijst17	Partij één
		D66