Øystein Saebø
email: oystein.sabo@uia.no

Understanding Twitter™ use among parliament representatives: A genre analysis

Keywords: Twitter, eParticipation, Parliament representatives, genre of communication, Democracy models

This article examines parliament representatives' Twittercontributions (tweets). First, the genre of communication approach is introduced to identify common characteristics and communication patterns. Second, the findings are analysed using various eDemocracy models and deliberative standards to identify to what extent these tweets could be characterized as part of a deliberative discussion. The tweets are mainly dominated by five communication purposes; providing links to information sources for other Twitter users, to inform about the representative's ongoing activities, to express views on topical issues, introducing non-political (private) content and participating in online discussions with other parliament representatives. Other less frequent communication patterns include tweets attracting attention to the representative's own blogs, requests for input from readers and finally discussions with citizens. The analysed tweets generally did not meet deliberative standards and are dominated by politicians disseminating information and discussing with other parliament representatives. We conclude by arguing that the parliament representatives´ Twitter use is linked to the Liberal Democracy model, where the main purpose is to disseminate information to electors, and provide information on ongoing activities to the audience.

Introduction

Throughout the last years, social networking services, such as Facebook and Twitter, have proliferated in political debate and communication, significantly influencing how various stakeholders communicate. Such services offer the potential to deliver conventional forms of discourse to a wider audience and offer new opportunities for political participation [START_REF] Baumgartner | MyFaceTube Politics[END_REF]. A growing body of research has begun to examine the influence of social networking services on political communication [START_REF] Baumgartner | MyFaceTube Politics[END_REF], since interpersonal discussion plays a distinct role in creating the dialogue necessary for sound political deliberation [START_REF] Tocqueville | Democracy in America: in two volumes with a critical appraisal of each volume by John Stuart Mill[END_REF].

This study contributes to this research by exploring how a social networking service, Twitter™, was adopted and used by parliament representatives. Conceptually, we use this empirical study to weave together two strands of research. The first strand argues that electronic communication, like the use of Twitter, can be classified into recognizable genres [START_REF] Yates | Genres of Organizational Communication: A Structurational Approach to Studying Communication and Media[END_REF]. Research on online political communication often exposes "the Internet" as one-dimensional [START_REF] Shah | Information and Expression in a Digital Age[END_REF], discussing "the Internet" as a single entity [START_REF] Baumgartner | MyFaceTube Politics[END_REF]. Genre refers to "a recognizable communicative event" [START_REF] Bhatia | Analysing genre: language use in professional settings[END_REF] with socially identifiable motives and tasks, which give a rational reason for communicative utterances to exist [START_REF] Päivärinta | The Genre System Lens on E-Democracy[END_REF]. Genres have been used to study the communication structure within organizations [START_REF] Yates | Genres of Organizational Communication: A Structurational Approach to Studying Communication and Media[END_REF], determining requirements for systems in general [START_REF] Päivärinta | The Concept of Genre within the Critical Approach to Information Systems Development[END_REF], and specifically in e-Participation projects [START_REF] Päivärinta | The Genre System Lens on E-Democracy[END_REF][START_REF] Saebø | Understanding the dynamics in e-Participation Initiatives: Looking through the genre and stakeholder lenses[END_REF]. A genre-based analysis may help to explore characteristics of politicians' Twitter postings to better understand the role of using such services for political purposes, and addresses the call for a more in-depth understanding of online political communication [START_REF] Saebø | The shape of eParticipation: Characterizing an emerging research area[END_REF].

The second strand of research argues that the use of electronic media for political purposes is influenced by the ideals regarding how democracy should take place [START_REF] Held | Models of Democracy[END_REF][START_REF] Lively | Democracy1975[END_REF][START_REF] Van Dijk | Models of democracy and concepts of communication[END_REF]. Current research on Internet and political engagement often focus on citizen's engagement [START_REF] Saebø | The shape of eParticipation: Characterizing an emerging research area[END_REF] and deliberation [START_REF] Zhang | The Revolution Will be Networked[END_REF][START_REF] Graham | Needles in a haystack : a new approach for identifying and assessing political talk in non -political discussion forums[END_REF][START_REF] Rose | Designing Deliberation Systems[END_REF]. The conclusions are often somewhat disappointing, illustrated by the conclusions drawn by Strandberg [START_REF] Strandberg | Public deliberation goes on-line? An analysis of citizens'Äô political discussions on the Internet prior to the Finnish parliamentary elections in 2007[END_REF]: "on-line discussions are not, at least for the time being, truly deliberative. The debates analysed generally did not meet deliberative standards in terms of quality and only politically very active and interested citizens seemed to take part in them. The question thus still remains if, and how, on-line citizens' discussions can ever become truly deliberative"(p. 71) Rose and Saebø [START_REF] Rose | Democracy Squared: designing on-line political communities to accommodate conflicting interests[END_REF], by analysing a political discussion forum, found conflicts of interest between citizens and politicians:

"Politicians set out to demonstrate their specialist/elite abilities through rational argumentation and to broadcast their policies to a broad range of voters in order to be (re)elected. Citizens engaged politicians in discourse in order to set agendas and influence political decision making"(p.160)

To fully understand the influence of social networking services on political communication, we need to broaden the perspective by including other democratic context than only the deliberative approach, and to include various stakeholders' perspectives. The eDemocracy models represent means for seeing technologies and development of the society as a mutually dependent and dynamically emergent phenomenon [START_REF] Päivärinta | Models of E-Democracy[END_REF]. Discussing the identified genres in relation to various eDemocracy models explore how politicians' use of Twitter contributes to various democracy ideals.

In this paper, we integrate these two research strands by investigating the use of Twitter among Norwegian parliament representatives. We conduct content analysis to analyse 473 tweets based on the genre of communication perspective to identify common patterns of communication. These patterns were then analysed in regards to the eDemocracy models.

Theoretical premises 2.Genres of communication

The term genre originally describes a distinctive type or category of literary composition [START_REF] Ihlström | The Evolution of a New(s) Genre[END_REF]. The genre perspective was introduced to Information System (IS) research by Yates and Orlikowski [START_REF] Yates | Genres of Organizational Communication: A Structurational Approach to Studying Communication and Media[END_REF][START_REF] Orlikowski | Genre repertoire: The structuring of Communicative Practices in Organizations[END_REF] who used it to investigate organizational communication by applying it to "recognized type of communications, e.g. letters, memoranda or meetings. In the eParticipation area, the theory of genres has been used to analyse the purpose and nature of communication in government-initiated discussion forums [START_REF] Päivärinta | The Genre System Lens on E-Democracy[END_REF][START_REF] Saebø | Understanding the dynamics in e-Participation Initiatives: Looking through the genre and stakeholder lenses[END_REF][START_REF] Rose | Democracy Squared: designing on-line political communities to accommodate conflicting interests[END_REF], and provided the basis for guidelines to develop eParticipation systems that combined eDemocracy models and genres [START_REF] Päivärinta | The Genre System Lens on E-Democracy[END_REF]. Genres are complex, as they integrate many different facets into an identifiable but intricate whole, and the boundaries are difficult to specify [START_REF] Kwasnik | Introduction to the special issue: Genres of digital documents[END_REF]. Yates and Orlikowski [START_REF] Yates | Genres of Organizational Communication: A Structurational Approach to Studying Communication and Media[END_REF] defined a genre of organizational communication as a typified and recurrent communicative action such as memos, meetings and training seminars, enacted to realize a particular social purpose. The recurrent situation includes the history and nature of established practices, social relations, and communication media within organizations, and involve expectations relating to communities and roles [START_REF] Yates | Genres of Organizational Communication: A Structurational Approach to Studying Communication and Media[END_REF].

Even though no common consensus exists on the exact definition of genre, most classifications include considerations of the form, expected content, and intended communicative purpose [START_REF] Kwasnik | Introduction to the special issue: Genres of digital documents[END_REF]. The purpose of a genre refers to the socially identifiable and enacted motives and tasks, which give a rational reason for communicative utterances to exist. Purpose is constructed and recognized by the organizational community [START_REF] Yates | Explicit and Implicit Structuring of Genres in Electronic Communication: Reinforcement and Change of Social Interaction[END_REF]. Form refers to observable aspects of the communication [START_REF] Yates | Explicit and Implicit Structuring of Genres in Electronic Communication: Reinforcement and Change of Social Interaction[END_REF], such as the preferred media for the typified utterances (e.g., pen and paper, telephone or Skype), linguistic characteristics of how information and communication content is organized and stylistic expectations for the language and other semantically meaningful expressions used [START_REF] Päivärinta | The Genre System Lens on E-Democracy[END_REF]. An established genre within a community serves as a template for social interaction, shaping the communicative actions of members within the community [START_REF] Orlikowski | Genre repertoire: The structuring of Communicative Practices in Organizations[END_REF].

By employing various computing devices and the Internet, the genre research agenda has broadened not only to organizational, but also digital genres [START_REF] Ihlström | The Evolution of a New(s) Genre[END_REF]. As documents migrate to the web, their identity also evolves [START_REF] Kwasnik | Introduction to the special issue: Genres of digital documents[END_REF]. Many technologies are converging -voice, image, text, databases, computing -creating opportunities for combining and recombining many various forms of genres in inventive ways and for unexpected purposes. Digital genres are thus not only characterized by traditional indicators, such as specific content and form, but also new and different cues for both identifying and then analysing and conceptualizing them.

In order to analyse genres, we adhere to the six dimensions of communicative interactions, introduced by Yates and Orlikowski [START_REF] Orlikowski | Genre repertoire: The structuring of Communicative Practices in Organizations[END_REF]: purposes (why), contents (what), participants (who/m), forms (how), time (when) and place (where), also known as the "5W1H" framework (See Table 1).

Why

Expectations about socially recognized purpose.

What

The content of the genre, including expectations about which genres typically appear and potential sequences.

Who/m

The participants involved in the communicative interaction and their roles, e.g. who initiates and who is addressed by the genres involved.

How

Expectations regarding the form, including expectations on media, structuring devices and linguistic elements.

When

Temporal expectations, such as deadlines or expectations (explicitly or implicitly stated) on timelines for performing the communicative actions. Where Location and time expectations, physical or virtual.

Table 1 : 5W1H framework (adapted from [20]

Models of eDemocracy

Ideas and ideals of democracy may vary significantly between societies, communities, and even the stakeholders of one community. Literature on democracy models [START_REF] Held | Models of Democracy[END_REF][START_REF] Lively | Democracy1975[END_REF][START_REF] Van Dijk | Models of democracy and concepts of communication[END_REF] uses varying characteristics in order to clarify differences among democracy ideas, making a detailed comparison of the competing models difficult. A review of this literature [START_REF] Päivärinta | Models of E-Democracy[END_REF] suggests an overarching but simplified comparison of various eDemocracy models based on two fundamental dimensions: inclusion in decisions and control of the agenda [START_REF] Dahl | Democracy and its critics1989[END_REF]. Inclusion refers to the idea of whether all members of a society are able to participate in current debates and decision-making processes. Control of the agenda is related to the issue of who decides what issues should be addressed in the first place. The resulting stereotypical models allow for analytical comparison on different theories, empirical situations and stakeholder perceptions between the models [START_REF] Päivärinta | Models of E-Democracy[END_REF]. Since this paper focuses on twitter use among parliament representatives, only the models where politicians are the initiators are relevant; that is, the Liberal and the Deliberative democracy models.

In Liberal eDemocracy, governmental agencies and the political elite set agendas for decision-making processes. Citizens participate only implicitly, if at all, in most of the decision-making processes, except for voting in elections. Meanwhile, the citizens are mostly regarded as consumers of services and subjects to the public governance. Liberal eDemocracy is based on a representative government, where citizens form the electorate, participate in public debate and provide mandates to representatives at the local level [START_REF] Held | Models of Democracy[END_REF]. The purpose of politics is to reconcile conflicting individual interests using politicians to mediate these conflicts through negotiations [START_REF] Eriksen | Kommunikativ handling og deliberativt demokrati : Jürgen Habermas' teori om politikk og samfunn[END_REF].

The concept of Deliberative eDemocracy connects citizens more explicitly and directly to the decision-making processes [START_REF] Held | Models of Democracy[END_REF][START_REF] Pateman | Participation and democratic theory1970[END_REF] emphasizes the role of open discussions in a properly functioning public sphere [START_REF] Gimmler | Deliberative democracy, the public sphere and the internet[END_REF]. Politicians and citizens share ideas via dialogue and discourse, which then leads to the formation of public political opinion. This is a form of representative democracy where the input and cooperation between citizens, politicians, and administration constitute the legalisation of power. Graham [START_REF] Graham | Needles in a haystack : a new approach for identifying and assessing political talk in non -political discussion forums[END_REF] introduces four components for deliberative democracy. First, the discussion should take the form of rational-critical discussion, with reasoned claims. Second, to achieve such rationality, reciprocity is needed, where the participants listen and respond to others. Third, reflexivity is required where the arguments of others are reflected against one's own. Finally, empathy might be necessary, where you are able to put yourself in another's position in order to achieve mutual understanding [START_REF] Graham | Needles in a haystack : a new approach for identifying and assessing political talk in non -political discussion forums[END_REF].

Research method

Twitter is a micro-blogging service where users may post 'tweets' (brief text updates that are a maximum of 140 characters) to describe their current status. Twitter allows a user to register as "followers" to receive updates (tweets) added by others [START_REF] Java | Why we twitter: understanding microblogging usage and communities[END_REF].

Tweets are exclusively textual and in principle form a document that can be analysed by any recognized form of textual analysis. In addition, the postings demonstrate many of the characteristics of conversation, such as question and answer periods, thematic groupings, ordering, and obvious conversational devices, such as references to previous postings and the opportunity to change the subject. The text is therefore suited to qualitative analysis, within a philosophical framework of hermeneutics, and genre analysis. Content analysis [START_REF] Silverman | Interpreting Qualitative Data[END_REF][START_REF] Berelson | Content Analysis In Communicative Research[END_REF] is chosen as the analysis method. Content analysis provides a relatively systematic and comprehensive summary or overview of the dataset as a whole [START_REF] Wilkinson | Qualitative Research: Theory, Method and Practice[END_REF]. It operates by observing repeated themes and categorizes them using a coding system.

The thematic analysis took a grounded approach. Tweets were examined in detail, first for more specific textual evidence of adherence to the political models and second for repeated types of postings and interactions. Communication patterns were derived in a grounded manner from the text (rather than from a theoretical source), giving the opportunity for a more qualitative style of detailed analysis designed to display the important features of the interaction. The resulting communication patterns were then iteratively used as thematic categories and the text recoded so that their frequency could be counted. Since the genres themselves can also be related to the democracy models, this analysis both triangulates the earlier theoretical analysis and exposes some increasingly detailed ways in which the interactions operate. The principle purpose of the theoretical analysis was to discover which models of democracy underpin the tweets posted.

A total of 102 (out of 165) parliament representatives posted approximately 4000 messages in the time period studied (January to June 2010). We randomly selected 473 of these tweets to be included in the conducted analysis. In the genre analysis, the tweets are studied in detail. Questions of structure, tone, style, intended audience, and relation to context were investigated, based on a genre approach to identify purpose and forms. These common patterns are then sorted according to the democracy models that they best relate to (each of the squares in the theoretical table is allotted a code). Some tweets are classified into more than one category. Thus, the number of tweets allocated into the various categories (527) exceeds the number of tweets analysed (473).

The content analyses are conducted to identify communication patterns and to explore the characteristics of the tweets posted, and do not allow for generalization towards the samples identified. The communication patterns should be seen as examples and potential archetypes, which may or may not be supported by quantitative studies. The number of occurrences should, therefore, not be seen as an attempt to generalize, but are instead conducted to support the textual descriptions of the identified communication patterns.

Results

The genre analysis identified eight typical communication patterns, which are introduced as follows.

Representatives posted links to information sources, which is the most common communication pattern identified (114 occurrences). This is a one-way communication pattern, where the representatives are providing some information for everyone to read, without any expectations to receive input or initiate a discussion with others. In general, the representative provide links to information supporting their own views, from sources sharing their political point of views, e.g. their own party's web-pages or mass-media from their own political "sphere". Furthermore, it is interesting to observe that links to online content from sources other than the dominating and established information providers (mass-media, political parties, organizations from the two sides of industry) are indeed rare. It seems as though the representatives, even when using social media like Twitter, are continuing to rely upon established sources for information.

Informing everyone about the representative's ongoing activities is the second most common communication pattern (98 occurrences). These tweets also represent a one-way communication pattern, with few (if any) attempts to get into dialogue with the reader (receiver) of the tweet posted. Such tweets are often posted when the representative is on external visits, or when the representative is participating in a debate in the parliament. Oftentimes, he/she is expressing his/her viewpoints while informing about what he/she is doing, e.g. by telling how impressed he/she is by what he/she explores when visiting an external project. There are no negative comments from visits outside the parliament; everyone seems to be pleased and impressed by the external visits.

Many tweets posted (87) express the representative's political statements. These tweets share some similarities with those providing links to information; they are topical (part of the ongoing parliament discussions or referring to issues discussed by the mass media) and represent one-way information dissemination, without encouraging the readers to respond. These tweets focus on the representative's own views of the issue being discussed. A very limited amount of these tweets (seven out of 87) include questions as a part of their statements, but some of these questions appear rhetoric.

It is quite common to tweet about non-political content (83 occurrences). On one hand, such tweets are not an important part of the political discussion. On the other hand, however, these tweets might be partly considered an attempt to allow citizens to get to know their representatives. It is interesting to look at what kind of private message that are posted. These tweets are heavily dominated by discussions about sports-related topics. Football and cross-country skiing are often introduced, which are both very popular sports in Norway. Talking about football, the representatives supports their local teams from the region they are elected representatives. Other popular tweets are about daily life, e.g. discussing family life in general or private plans for what to do in their spare time. There are very few tweets in this category that could be considered controversial. Discussions with other parliament representatives are quite common (77 occurrences). Unlike the communication patterns introduced above, the dialog is important here. References to other Twitter users and ongoing discussions are common, and the statements often include arguments posted by other parliament representatives. There are few, if any, non-politicians participating in these discussions. As such, the discussions appear internally oriented, without any clear invitations for others to participate. These tweets are generally posted during discussions taking part in the parliament, where several parliament representatives are present in the same room listening to the same debate.

More seldom (28 occurrences), the representatives are linking to their own blog postings, or their own postings at e.g. their party's web page. These tweets are generally the only communication pattern referring to information not being posted by the established information providers (e.g. mass-media or the parliament). These tweets might be seen as "teasers" to attract more readers to the blogs. They share characteristics with the "linking to information" category introduced above, and represent in general one-way information dissemination, even though it should be mentioned that the blogs might encourage readers to add comments and take part in a dialogue.

Requests for input from other Twitter users represent the first of the final two communication patterns where non-politicians are included as active participants, posting their own tweets (in the discussions) or being requested to respond (requests for input). These communication patterns are quite rare, with eight occurrences for requests and only two occurrences where the representatives have posted tweets being a part of an on-going discussion dominated by non-politicians. The requests for input from citizens are often connected to an early phase of a decision-making process, where the representative or his/her party is in a clarifying phase. Readers are then asked to reply on some specific issues, expressing their argument to further guide the representative. No information is given on how this information will be a part of the further process, or how the representative plans to comment on the (potential) input made by citizens.

Finally, there are two tweets representing discussions with citizens (nonpoliticians). Here, non-politicians are dominating, both context-wise by initiating what topics to discuss, and content-wise by dominating the debate concerning number of occurrences. It makes no sense to introduce general communication patterns based on only two tweets. Thus, they are not summarized as the communication patterns above. These tweets follow a similar pattern to the discussion within parliament representatives, except from the fact that citizens are dominating the discussions.

The communication patterns are summarized towards the 5W1H framework in table 2 below.

"Request for input" and "discussions with non-politicians", with ten occurrences altogether, representing less than 2% of the tweets analysed.

The majority of the tweets posted do not support the Deliberative democracy model. As introduced above, the Deliberative model emphasizes the role of open discussion between citizens and politicians, sharing ideas via dialogue and discourse. None of the requirements for the deliberative discourse (rationality, including reciprocity, reflexivity and empathy) are met by more than only a few of the postings.

It could be argued that the ideas and ideals of the Liberal democracy model are dominating, where the citizens are regarded as subjects to the public governance, not as active participants in an ongoing dialogue. Thus, it is important for the parliament representative to inform citizens about the daily work, to disseminate their political points of view, and to get closer to potential voters by inviting them to learn more about their daily (private) life. Interestingly, these private messages are extremely non-controversial and dominated by content "everyone" agrees with, e.g. by supporting national skiing athletes or regional football teams.

Discussion

The main purpose in this paper has been to explore how parliament representatives Twitter, by identifying and describing common communication patterns. Thus, the main contribution is the descriptive analyses of the various communication patterns introduced above. The tweets are dominated by one-way information dissemination from the representatives to an unnamed audience. These tweets do not represent the ideas and ideals in a deliberative democracy and do not encourage anyone to reply or participate in an ongoing discussion. Further research is needed to fully understand the rationale and motivation for why these communication patterns are dominating, e.g. by interviewing the representatives themselves.

The parliament representatives' Twitter messages do not appear to be posted mainly to address the general public. The comments received from others often have personal references, e.g. by referring to earlier meetings. Furthermore, to truly understand the content and the context of the tweets posted, the reader needs to follow the chain of messages posted, not only to read one tweet. That might be one explanation why these tweets are not very deliberative; the candidates may not consider Twitter an important arena for conducting discussions with citizens, but instead as an arena to discuss with their friends, supporters and colleagues. More research is needed to further explore the representatives' views on these issues.

The representatives appear conscious on the regions they are representing. Most of the messages in the "informing about ongoing activities" category are messages from the representatives' home regions. An explanation might be that the representatives are more often visiting projects in their home region. But it might also be more important for the representatives to tell potential electors that they are very active in their own regions. If the latter argument is true, this might be considered as a part of a Liberal democracy way of thinking, where it is important to inform (and not discuss with) the potential electors of how active and enthusiastic the representative is about projects in his/her own region. The regional perspective is also present in the private messages discussing sports. For instance, the candidates are, without any exceptions, in support of their local football team. Perhaps none of the representatives are supporting teams from other parts of the country, or maybe those who are do not find it sensible to communicate such support?

The analyses conducted ultimately yield the conclusion that we have seen several times in the eParticipation area; new technology does not extensively alter traditional communication patterns. The parliament representatives continue to focus on information dissemination, where the readers (citizens) are mainly considered as being the receivers of information, not active participants. This is, as such, not meant to be critical towards the politicians; they are most likely just doing what they have always done: utilizing available communication opportunities to inform potential electors about their ongoing activities and political point of view in order to achieve support and be re-elected as parliament representatives. New communication channels, like Twitter, do not change these needs in the short run.

What, then, is the use and usefulness of parliament representatives' Twitter messages? Firstly, what we have not investigated here is the consequence of shortening the distance between the representatives and citizens. Although dialogue between representatives and non-politicians is very rare, the opportunity to communicate is being presented. That is, every Twitter user has the opportunity to comment upon tweets posted by the representatives. More research is needed to investigate the perceived value of the potential to communicate.

Secondly, it is interesting to investigate who the users are among the 165 parliament representatives. That is, are there any characteristics among the active Twitter users that may tell us anything about the use and usefulness of twittering? A striking perspective is the lack of representatives from central government. Moreover, the most prominent representatives are not being very active. For instance, none of the party-leaders have posted more than two tweets in our selection. The more active contributors are the younger representatives in the parliament. The explanation might be that these representatives know how to use the technology. But maybe they are also in a bigger need than the more established representatives to utilize new arenas to communicate? The young representatives have less experience and are perhaps more seldom appointed to important positions within their party or the parliament? This might explain why they are more actively using Twitter to communicate.

Finally, it appears as though representatives from the opposition parties are more active Twitter users than representatives from the government parties. Maybe the opposition party representatives have more needs to communicate and express their views since they are not equally influential on the decisions being made in comparison to their colleagues from the government parties?

Conclusion

In this paper we have explored how the parliament representatives are using Twitter by identifying common communication patterns and discussed them in light of both the Liberal and the Deliberative democracy model. The tweets analysed generally did not meet deliberative standards and are dominated by politicians distributing information about political issues and themselves and discussions between various politicians. We conclude by arguing that the parliament representatives' Twitter use is linked to the Liberal democracy model, where the main purpose is to communicate information to electors and market the representatives' activities to the audience.

Our contribution represents a means for seeing social networking services and development of democratic discourses as mutually dependent and as a dynamically emergent phenomenon. We subscribe to an established line of theorizing that, in general, warns against viewing any application of information technology as a deterministic tool, orientating instead towards analysis of structural processes in which technologies and organization contexts (and, in this case, societies) develop in an interwoven [START_REF] Markus | Information Technology and Organizational Change: Causal Structure in Theory and Research[END_REF][START_REF] Orlikowski | Research commentary: Desperately seeking IT in IT Research -A Call to Theorizing the IT Artifact[END_REF]. Our analysis of Twitter use in light of the genre of communication perspective and eDemocracy models addresses this issues: the need to discuss societal values and ambitions in connection with the development and use of a particular technology in a particular democratic context instead of seeing technology -let alone democracy -as a generic "black box" [START_REF] Päivärinta | Models of E-Democracy[END_REF].

Why

Provide link to information sources for the readers What Often the representative introduces his/her own view on a topical issue and provides hyperlinks to relevant information sources. The information provided is in general supporting his/her own views, e.g. by linking to his/her party or to online newspapers sharing his/her own political point of views. Who/m The only one involved is the one posting the tweet. There are no specific expectations expressed on who is the receiver.

How

The candidate often expresses his/her own views in the first sentence. The second part is the hyperlink to the information source. When Topicality seems important. The more common explanations why it is topical is that that something is discussed in mass-media, the representative is travelling, visiting e.g. a project, a municipality or a business, or the Parliament is currently discussing the topic being introduced.

Where Online 24/7 2 Why

To inform about the representatives on-going activities What The representative informs about what he/she is (or has been) doing. Often, he/she is also expressing his/her own point of view. If it is an external visit, his/her views are always positive, being impressed or very supportive towards what he/she is experiencing. Who/m The representative is the only one being directly involved and there are no expectations to get the reader involved in a dialogue.

How

In general, these tweets consist of one sentence in first person singular introducing the on-going activities. When These tweets are posted in connection to external activities or parliament' discussions. Where 24/7, more often than other tweets posted from mobile devices.

Why To express his/her own views on topical issues

What The representative introduces the topic by referring to a source (a debate, mass-media, opinions expressed by other representatives). Then he/she adds her statements on the issue introduced. Who/m The first part refers to a third-party. The second part refers to his/her own points of view. There is no invitations or expectations to the reader to comment, although other Twitter users often do.

How

The first part of the tweet often refer to other Twitter users or debates by introducing "@" (reference to other users) or # (hash tag, referring to on-going Twitter debates). It is quite common to post ironic comments. When In relation to topical issues. The number increases during parliament debates. If one or two of the representatives post such tweets, a spillover effect seems to appear, where more representatives add similar tweets. Where Online 24*7 4 Why

Introducing non-political content What All kind of (non-controversial) private issues, dominated by messages in relation to sports, always supporting Norwegian athletes or teams from their own region. One-way information dissemination about on-going activities. Who/m The representative comments on some third-party stakeholder (athletes, musician or others), or his/her own family (anonymously).

How

Generally only one short sentence about on-going activities, which may include exclamation or question marks, the latter representing mainly rhetoric questions. When In connection to sport-or cultural arrangements, more often before or after the weekend or in relation to holidays. Where Online 24/7 5 Why

Participating in online discussions with other parliament representatives What The first part often relates to arguments introduced by others, or a link to users or topics being discussed. The second part is either a statement or a question. The question is either for other representatives to comment on or it appears rhetoric. Irony is quite common, e.g. when characterising other party's or representative's views. Who/m There is a clear connection between the tweet and other tweets and users who are encouraged to respond. The audience (the readers) are not explicitly addressed, and are as such a "non-present" part of the debates.

How

These tweets consist of two parts. First, the reference to the on-going discussions and then the representative's contribution to the discussions. Linguistic elements related to Twitter are commonly used, such as reference to users (identified by "@") and references to ongoing Twitter debates (identified by "#"). When Related to offline activities, in general to parliament debates where several parliament representatives are participating and listening to the same offline content. Thus, the tweets are quite often posted during office hours. Where More often than other tweets posted from mobile devices.

Why

Attract readers to her own blog postings What The representative often introduces his/her own view on a topical issue, argues why this is topical and why more information is needed, before providing a hyperlink to his/her own blog. Who/m The only one being involved is the one posting the tweet: There are no expectations on who is the receiver.

How

First part is the view and the reason for discussing the topic. The second part is the link to the blog. When Topicality seems important. A common explanation for topicality is that something is discussed in mass media, the parliament is currently discussing the topic, or his/her own party is expressing an opinion about the topics discussed. Where Online 24/7 7 Why

Requests for input from Twitter users What The representative introduces a topic and asks for some input from readers. No further information is given on how the information is to be used or will be commented upon by the representative. Who/m The representative is initiating the dialogue and invites other (unnamed) Twitter users to participate by posting their view on the issue being discussed.

How

The first part introduces the topic and tries to motivate readers to respond by arguing why the topic as well as the response is important. The second part is the request for input, most often conducted by posting a question. When These tweets appear to be posted in an early part of a decision-making process, when the representative or the party is considering various alternative solutions to the issue being discussed. Where Online 24/7 By analysing the tweets towards the various eDemocracy models, we found that an overwhelming amount of tweets represent one-way communication patterns, where the parliament representatives are focusing on information dissemination to an unnamed audience. In general, there are very few examples where the representatives participate in debates where non-politicians are dominating, or add requests to the readers to participate. Tweets of this nature are only present in the categories


Anne Fleur Van Veenstra
email: a.f.e.vanveenstra@tudelft.nl

Marijn Janssen

Andreas Boon
email: aboon@deloitte.nl

Measure to Improve: A Study of eParticipation in frontrunner Dutch Municipalities

Keywords: eParticipation, measurement, benchmarking, measurement instrument, municipalities

eParticipation is still in its early phases of development, in which government organizations undertake many experiments. There is no systematic overview of these experiments, which inhibits learning from each other. Measuring and benchmarking eParticipation provide the opportunity to inspire new developments by sharing best practices. This paper presents the development of a measurement instrument that is subsequently used to investigate eParticipation in frontrunner Dutch municipalities. This instrument combines factors related to the role of citizens, the type of media deployed, and the organization of the municipality. Using these factors to measure eParticipation in seventeen municipalities we found a large focus on traditional media forms usually supporting informative and consultative practices for policy development. This study, however, has been largely limited to measuring the type of ICT that is used to facilitate eParticipation. Therefore, we recommend extending it with measurements that give insight into the actual use, effectiveness, and the inclusion of citizens' input in policy making.

Introduction

An important element in serving the citizens of any democratic nation is to understand their perceptions of the issues they find important. Yet many citizens lack an interest in and feel dissatisfied with politics [START_REF] Macintosh | E-democracy and e-participation research in Europe[END_REF][START_REF]European e-Government 2005-2007: Taking stock of good practice and progress towards implementation of the i2010 eGovernment Action Plan[END_REF]. In may parts of the world, voter turnout and civic participation have steadily been decreasing since the 1960s [START_REF] Niemi | Controversies in Voting Behavior[END_REF][START_REF] Fraser | Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom: How Online Social Networking Will Transform Your Life, Work and World[END_REF]. Traditional channels influencing policy-making, such as newspapers and town hall meetings, are decreasing in popularity, especially among younger citizens [START_REF] Fraser | Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom: How Online Social Networking Will Transform Your Life, Work and World[END_REF]. eParticipation has the potential to bridge the gap between citizens and the government [START_REF] Macintosh | E-democracy and e-participation research in Europe[END_REF], as well as being an instrument to make better and more supported policies [START_REF] Mcdermott | Building open government[END_REF]. eParticipation can be defined as the use of ICT by governments to support information provisioning to citizens and to engage and facilitate citizens to influence the government in their policy-formation and decision-making processes [START_REF] Macintosh | E-democracy and e-participation research in Europe[END_REF][START_REF]International Center of Excellence for Local eDemocracy (ICELE): Transformational Democracy[END_REF][START_REF] Macintosh | eParticipation in policy-making: the research and the challenges[END_REF].

Many government organizations around the world undertake eParticipation projects. Due to the infancy of eParticipation [START_REF]Committee of Ministers: Recommendation CM/Rec(2009)1 of the Committee of Ministers to member states on electronic democracy[END_REF][START_REF] Albrecht | eParticipation -Electronic Participation of Citizens and the Business Community in eGovernment[END_REF], the current focus of government organizations is exploratory in nature. Current eParticipation experiments represent a divergent set of methods and philosophies within government organizations, and "comparative empirical classifications and evaluations remain the exception" [9, p. 5]. Measurements and benchmarking facilitate the uptake of new developments by showcasing best practices and stimulating the further use of these features. Although there is much research on measuring and benchmarking eGovernment [START_REF]UNPAN: UN e-government survey 2008: From e-government to connected governance[END_REF][START_REF] West | E-Government and the Transformation of Service Delivery and Citizen Attitudes[END_REF][START_REF]UNPAN: Benchmarking e-Government -A Global Perspective[END_REF][START_REF]The User Challenge Benchmarking The Supply of Online Public Services, 7 th measurement[END_REF][START_REF]Accenture: Leadership in Customer Service: New Expectations[END_REF][START_REF] Potnis | Measuring e-Governance as an innovation in the public sector[END_REF][START_REF] Janssen | Measuring and Benchmarking the Back-end of E-Government[END_REF][START_REF] Magd | Benchmarking: achieving best value in public-sector organizations[END_REF], scant attention has been given to the measurement and benchmarking of eParticipation. This paper presents the development and validation of a measurement instrument for eParticipation in Dutch municipalities. Local government is an important level of government for eParticipation as citizens feel they are more personally involved and have a high expectation about the effect of participating in the decision making processes of their municipality [START_REF]European e-Government 2005-2007: Taking stock of good practice and progress towards implementation of the i2010 eGovernment Action Plan[END_REF][START_REF] Albrecht | eParticipation -Electronic Participation of Citizens and the Business Community in eGovernment[END_REF]. Furthermore, in the Netherlands most contact citizens have with the government takes place at the municipal level [START_REF] Hoogwout | Super Pilots, Subsidizing or Self-Organization: Stimulating E-Government Initiatives in Dutch Local Governments[END_REF].

The instrument presented in this paper focuses on the ability of ICT to facilitate and enable eParticipation. The measurement instrument includes three elements that, when connected, give insight into the state of eParticipation in Dutch municipalities: the role of citizens, the type of media being used, and the municipal organization. This paper is structured as follows. First, we will give an overview of existing benchmarks and their use for inspiring eParticipation developments. Then, we present the development of the measure instrument for eParticipation, followed by the outcomes of using this instrument to measure eParticipation in seventeen Dutch municipalities. Finally, we will present conclusions and recommendations for further research.

Measuring and Benchmarking eParticipation

Measurement and benchmarking have gained considerable attention in the field of eGovernment [START_REF]UNPAN: UN e-government survey 2008: From e-government to connected governance[END_REF][START_REF] West | E-Government and the Transformation of Service Delivery and Citizen Attitudes[END_REF][START_REF]UNPAN: Benchmarking e-Government -A Global Perspective[END_REF][START_REF]The User Challenge Benchmarking The Supply of Online Public Services, 7 th measurement[END_REF][START_REF]Accenture: Leadership in Customer Service: New Expectations[END_REF][START_REF] Potnis | Measuring e-Governance as an innovation in the public sector[END_REF][START_REF] Janssen | Measuring and Benchmarking the Back-end of E-Government[END_REF][START_REF] Magd | Benchmarking: achieving best value in public-sector organizations[END_REF]. These measurements are often an attempt to quantify or operationalize complex and wicked problems. Breaking down such a subject into smaller and measureable parts can provide useful insights. The benefits of such measurements include being able to compare the current situation with the desired situation, analyzing the costs and benefits of investments, and providing motivation for future developments [START_REF] Grant | Developing a Generic Framework for E-Government[END_REF]. International benchmarks such as the UN Index [START_REF]UNPAN: UN e-government survey 2008: From e-government to connected governance[END_REF][START_REF]UNPAN: Benchmarking e-Government -A Global Perspective[END_REF], the OECD e-Government studies, GapGemini's Public Service Benchmark for the European Commission [START_REF]The User Challenge Benchmarking The Supply of Online Public Services, 7 th measurement[END_REF], and Accenture's Public Service Model [START_REF]Accenture: Leadership in Customer Service: New Expectations[END_REF] have stimulated governments to develop their eGovernment activities. While some of these benchmarks include elements of eParticipation, no benchmark exists that focuses exclusively on eParticipation. Elements of participation that are often included have a predominantly technical focus, measuring the availability of a type of media or service provided by an organization [START_REF] Potnis | Measuring e-Governance as an innovation in the public sector[END_REF].

Although benchmarking is associated with the promotion of best practices and provision of incentives for improvement, it has also generated critique. Especially the criteria and indicators included as well as the method of measurement have attracted criticism [START_REF] Janssen | Measuring and Benchmarking the Back-end of E-Government[END_REF]. Bannister [START_REF] Bannister | The curse of the benchmark: an assessment of the validity and value of egovernment comparisons[END_REF] criticizes scoring methods on a number of accounts: complex issues are bundled into one single score or measured by the use of proxies, the changes of scores and interpretation of criteria over time render comparison impossible, the scope and complexity involved and the associated problems of operationalizing, and the often ambiguous interpretation of the scores. Janssen et al. [START_REF] Janssen | If you measure it, they will score: an assessment of international eGovernment benchmarking[END_REF] higlighted another problem involved with benchmarking, using the slogan 'if you measure it, they will score'. This means that as soon as certain elements are operationalized in a specific way, organizations will make sure that they score high on the operationalized score, instead of looking into the underlying issues. The use of benchmarking should therefore be used as part of a wider context of assessment and quality mangement [START_REF] Magd | Benchmarking: achieving best value in public-sector organizations[END_REF][START_REF] Bannister | The curse of the benchmark: an assessment of the validity and value of egovernment comparisons[END_REF]. Bannister [START_REF] Bannister | The curse of the benchmark: an assessment of the validity and value of egovernment comparisons[END_REF] further argues that a benchmark represents a trade-off between costs, scale and quality of information, and that measurement methodologies are too often guided by cost constraints.

Development of a measurement instrument for eParticipation

Due to the infancy of eParticipation [START_REF]Committee of Ministers: Recommendation CM/Rec(2009)1 of the Committee of Ministers to member states on electronic democracy[END_REF][START_REF] Albrecht | eParticipation -Electronic Participation of Citizens and the Business Community in eGovernment[END_REF], the current focus is experimental in nature and systematic studies into best practices are lacking. eParticipation is still in its early stages and few initiatives exist that connect the multiple elements of eParticipation, such as providing information, facilitating bottom-up initiatives from citizens and actively engaging citizens with government [START_REF] Macintosh | E-democracy and e-participation research in Europe[END_REF]. Furthermore, measuring the deployment of online media alone does not provide a full overview of the state of eParticipation as it is also necessary to understand the various roles that citizens can take on when engaging with the government as well as the role of eParticipation in the internal organization. Following the multiple elements of eParticipation, we opted for an instrument that consists of three interconnected elements of measuring eParticipation:

(1) Citizen engagement: the roles citizens take on in their contact with the government; (2) ICT deployment: the types of online media used; and (3) Organization: the internal organization of municipalities.

The choice for these three elements has been made to cover the 'demand' for, the 'supply' of, and the means of communication for eParticipation. The municipal website can be seen as the technological facilitator between the citizen as user and the municipal organization as facilitator and service provider. These elements have been part of some measurement instruments and frameworks as well [START_REF] Bannister | The curse of the benchmark: an assessment of the validity and value of egovernment comparisons[END_REF][START_REF] Aichholzer | Evaluating e-Democracy[END_REF][START_REF] Loukis | Evaluating Parliamentary e-Participation[END_REF][START_REF] Ferguson | Digital Dialogues, Second Phase Report[END_REF]. In order to measure the state of eParticipation, all three elements should be taken into account as well as the relations between the three elements.

Per element of the instrument a different set of measures was identified. For example, different types of media were distinguished according to their potential for eParticipation and scores were derived reflecting potential and actual use. To ensure that the instrument has the possibility of prolonged use and enables comparisons over time, an 'ideal' score was set at 100% and subsequently the amount of this ideal realized was determined and a score accordingly attributed. Furthermore, to avoid the pitfall mentioned by Bannister [START_REF] Bannister | The curse of the benchmark: an assessment of the validity and value of egovernment comparisons[END_REF], scores are not aggregated on a single measure. Scores for the individual services or components that make up the elements are, for example, determined by the level of activity observed (e.g. posts per month, channel views, number of followers, etc.) and the level of interaction possible (e.g. one-way, reactions possible, discussions possible, etc.). Measurements are done based on the information gathered from the municipal websites, and by assessing and categorizing this information based on pre-defined patterns that were developed by carrying out fifteen interviews with expert in the field of eParticipation.

Measuring the state of eParticipation of a municipality was done in three steps. Firstly, the measures that can be obtained by looking at the websites of seventeen municipalities were scored. Then, using these measurements, their potential for each of the factors was determined. And finally, six municipalities were studied more indepth by carrying out interviews with employees. These semi-structured interviews provided extra information by reflecting on the data gathered by assessing the website, and investigated the internal organization which could not be measured by looking at the website. The purpose of these interviews was to generate additional context for understanding the measurement results based on organizational factors such as the level of knowledge and resources available within a municipality.

Citizen engagement

The first element of the measurement instrument is the role citizens take on in their contact with the government. Our measurement instrument uses generic roles based on user patterns to identify for which roles the municipal websites cater. Distinguishing between these roles can enable municipalities to refine their eParticipation strategy based on the type of interaction they wish to promote. Six different roles are distinguished related to internet usage [START_REF] Li | Groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies[END_REF]: -Inactives do not participate at all; -Spectators read blogs, listen to podcasts, watch videos from other users, and read forums; -Joiners maintain a social networking profile and participate in social networks; -Collectors aggregate data via RSS feeds; -Critics review products/services, comment on blogs/forums, and contribute to wiki's; and -Creators publish a blog/website, upload videos/music, and write articles or stories.

While the Inactive and Collector roles are useful in understanding different user types and their expectations about websites, they are not participatory roles. Therefore, these roles will be left out in our instrument. The information found on the municipal websites was assessed to determine to which extent the services cater for the user roles. For example, investments in social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter likely invite citizens that have taken on the Joiner role. This gives insight in the degree to which municipalities facilitate specific user roles and accordingly, their type of involvement. Municipalities can use this information to determine the facilitation of specific roles and build an appropriate social strategy [START_REF] Li | Groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies[END_REF].

ICT deployment

The purpose of this element of the measurement instrument is to measure how well municipalities can facilitate eParticipation on their website through the use of online media. Firstly, this element includes the selection of the type of media as well as how actively these chosen media forms are used. Based on literature, the following categorization [START_REF] Ferguson | Digital Dialogues, Second Phase Report[END_REF] and media [START_REF]International Center of Excellence for Local eDemocracy (ICELE): Transformational Democracy[END_REF][START_REF] Albrecht | eParticipation -Electronic Participation of Citizens and the Business Community in eGovernment[END_REF][START_REF] Ferguson | Digital Dialogues, Second Phase Report[END_REF][START_REF] Kafentzis | E-dialogos: an holistic approach for enhancing e-Participation in local government[END_REF][START_REF] Rentinck | E-overheid lijkt consistent, maar vergeet vaak de klant[END_REF][START_REF] Tambouris | A Framework for Assessing eParticipation Projects and Tools[END_REF] were selected for measurement:

-Standard media: Email, Newsletter, Short Message Service (SMS), Poll, Survey; -Innovative media: Real Simple Syndication (RSS) Feed, Blog, Forum, Webcasting, Social Networks (LinkedIn, Facebook, Hyves), Twitter, Media Community (Flickr, YouTube), Chat, Interactive Map, ePetition, Wiki; and -Experimental media: Simulation or Game, Virtual World, Chatbot, Group Support System.

Standard media forms have been around for a long time, innovative media contain some Web 2.0 aspects such as social networks and indicate a popular segment of media, and the experimental media are (as of yet) rarely used [START_REF] Ferguson | Digital Dialogues, Second Phase Report[END_REF]. This categorization shifts over time and is subjective in the sense that some media that are classified as experimental may have become innovative or standard for generic situations. We found that this classification fits the current Dutch eParticipation context by discussing these issues in the interviews with the experts. Secondly, the media types investigated in this measurement tool can be classified according to the level of participation they are usually used for. Five different levels of participation can be distinguished according to the increasing importance they entail for municipalities to act upon [START_REF]Committee of Ministers: Recommendation CM/Rec(2009)1 of the Committee of Ministers to member states on electronic democracy[END_REF][START_REF]Committee of Ministers: Recommendation CM/Rec(2009)1 of the Committee of Ministers to member states on electronic democracy[END_REF][START_REF] Ferguson | Digital Dialogues, Second Phase Report[END_REF][START_REF] Bannister | ICT Hyperbole and the Red Queen Syndrome[END_REF][START_REF] Parycek | E-democracy: ICT and policies for participation, e-Democracy in Austria[END_REF]:

-Informing: one-way provisioning of information about public affairs and the municipal organization; -Consulting: expertise, opinions, and/or votes are used to poll for the perspective of the citizen on selected topics. Municipalities may use these as input for their decision-making but they are not obliged to act them; -Advising: expanding consultation into a group discussion where citizens can deliberate together with the municipality about problems or policy alternatives, thereby carrying more weight than consulting; -Co-producing: a form of participation where the agenda is set together with the citizens and a new policy or service is created together. The municipality is beholden to the results of the process; and -Co-decision: the municipality asks citizens to make a binding choice about a selection of policy alternatives.

Organization

The third aspect of the measurement tool is the organization of the municipality. The website is the online front-office for eParticipation, so it is crucial that the offline back-office is capable of supporting this. As this cannot be studied by looking at the website, a set of interview questions for employees of the six municipalities was defined. These open interview questions are not technically part of the measurement tool as they do not provide any eventual score or assessment, but they can be used to link eParticipation to the decision making processes in the municipalities. This element included questions on whether or not people were given responsibilities regarding eParticipation, the existence of training, and the amount of budget available for example. Multiple eParticipation researchers [START_REF] Loukis | Evaluating Parliamentary e-Participation[END_REF][START_REF] Ferguson | Digital Dialogues, Second Phase Report[END_REF][START_REF] Tambouris | A Framework for Assessing eParticipation Projects and Tools[END_REF][START_REF]Central Office of Information: Effective public engagement: A guide for policy-makers and communication professionals[END_REF]] make a connection between the different forms of participation and the different policy phases:

-Agenda-setting; -Policy analysis, sometimes called Design; -Policy-creation or decision-making; -Implementation; and -Monitoring or evaluation.

Analyzing the forms of participation in relation to the policy cycle is useful because it places citizen participation in the lifecycle of municipal processes. The input from stakeholders and the openness of the process differ as projects progress [START_REF] Bruijn | Procesmanagement. Over procesontwerp en besluitvorming[END_REF].

Participation of citizens plays a different role in the agenda-setting phase than in the implementation phase. Municipalities can adopt eParticipation in those phases they want to focus on.

Findings

The municipalities chosen for this study were known for actively exploring eParticipation opportunities and most of them can be seen as frontrunners. In total seventeen municipalities were investigated by analyzing their websites, and for six of these municipalities interviews were held. Five of these interviewed municipalities were large and one was medium-sized. During the interviews held, the employees of the six municipalities generally recognized and confirmed their scores on the measurement instrument.

Citizen engagement

The capabilities of municipalities to facilitate specific roles citizens' take on in their contact with the government are shown in Fig. 1. This shows that the municipalities generally cater to the Spectator role (i.e. listening and reading information provided by the government) and the Joiner role (which maintains a social networking profile and participates in social networks). The other two roles, the role of the Critic (those that review and comment on wiki's and forums) and the role of the Creator (people who publish their own content), are less facilitated by the capabilities of the municipal websites. The ICT deployment scores per media type -standard, innovative, and experimental -are shown in Fig. 2. Although there are some exceptions, the Standard media scores are generally the highest of the three types with scores reaching above 55% and with an average of 34%. The second most common types of media are the Innovative ones with an average score of 21%. Experimental media types are hardly -if at alldeployed by the municipalities in this study. The average score here is 6% with 7 municipalities not having any examples at all. This shows the limited level of media usage in the investigated municipalities that are considered as frontrunners, which likely has consequences for their potential to develop these media for eParticipation.

In Fig. 3, the media forms deployed are categorized according to the participatory role they facilitate. A higher occurrence of the Informing (the provisioning of information) and Consulting (facilitating input from individual citizens) levels of participation can be observed. While Advising (the facilitation of input from groups of citizens) and Co-deciding (the joint agenda-setting by citizens and municipalities) can be observed in the municipalities under study, the participation level of Coproducing (where citizens are responsible for policy-making) is observed in only a few municipalities. Note that only a selection of municipalities is shown in order to simplify the graph for viewing, but the patterns shown represents the other municipalities too. The data were also mapped onto the different phases of the Policy cycle. The graph pattern in Fig. 4 shows a greater focus on Monitoring and Agenda-setting. This is likely a result of the large role that Consultation and Informing play in these phases, which are currently the most common forms of participation. The lesser emphasis on Implementation is expected as there were few participation forms observed where citizens are capable of contributing in this phase.

Discussion and limitations

From the application of the measurement instrument to the Dutch municipalities it becomes clear that eParticipation in still in its early stages. Although they try to reap some of the low-hanging fruits such as deploying already common forms of ICT for purposes of eParticipation, it is clear that the municipalities participating in this study are still experimenting. As these municipalities are considered frontrunners in the Netherlands, it is likely that others lag behind. From the findings of applying our benchmarking instrument we identified two major issues that need to be addressed to further develop eParticipation in municipalities in the Netherlands: spurring the use of media forms beyond mere simple interactions, and the direct involvement of municipal administrators in more advanced forms of eParticipation.

The choice for predominantly simple media forms on municipal websites reveals the hesitance of municipalities for committing to more advanced forms of ICT and, hence, eParticipation. Insofar as municipalities have implemented media forms that can be used for interaction with citizens, they are hardly used in that way. Particularly social media such as Twitter and YouTube are very popular choices, but are only used to send information. A reason for this may be that these activities require less effort from the municipalities. Furthermore, we observed that a major issue for the deployment of eParticipation is the degree to which municipal administrators can directly interact with citizens through social media. In case they are allowed to do so, the question what are suitable rules for this contact remains. In municipalities issues may quickly become political. This means that for the 'real' interactive tools, such as forums and simulation games, which need to be moderated real-time, this issue will prove a severe limitation in their use. Currently, there is a lack of skills and resources for process management to deal with new input. The role of civil officials in this interaction is also an issue which must be dealt with for eParticipation to succeed on a larger scale.

The instrument developed in this paper can be seen as a first step towards measuring the state of eParticipation in the Netherlands. This was generally confirmed by recognition of the outcomes by the interviewees. The instrument aimed, however, only at measuring the ability of ICT to facilitate and enable eParticipation, instead of on the actual use, influence, and effectiveness. Its main limitation thus the focus on the technical, 'supply'-side of eParticipation. The measurement tool only made use of data that were visible on the website. This resulted in predominantly measuring the type of media being used. Although roles of citizens and the municipal organization were taken into account, they could only be scored on the basis of their potential through the types of media deployed. The fact that an organization is able to deploy a certain media type and thereby has the potential to facilitate a certain user role, does not necessarily mean that they are actively engaging with citizens in an effective way.

An important reason for the limited scope of the measurement instrument was a lack of resources for in-depth assessments of a large number of municipalities. Measurements were therefore carried out in a cost-efficient manner by focusing on elements that could be measured easily. We therefore recommend for eParticipation measurements to use qualitative methods such as interviews, which allow for more substantive measurement and categorization, instead of an instrument that only measures the potential of the front-office. We also found that conducting interviews and carrying out an in-depth assessment of the state of eParticipation has the potential to inspire learning among municipalities. Furthermore, as categorization was done by experts, it was subjective. We therefore recommend that further research should be done on the development of generally accepted measurements for eParticipation.

Because of the focus on the 'supply'-side, the actual needs and desires of citizens with regard to eParticipation were not measured in this instrument. To include measures on the demand-side, the instrument should be extended to include interviews with citizens. Another issue with the focus on the supply-side of eParticipation was that some of the experts interviewed criticized the measurement instrument for including the Informing level as this is often not seen as a form of participation, but rather as a precondition. For this reason, it is useful to keep it among the levels of participation deployed in the benchmarking tool, but it should be made clear that this is step 'zero' on the way towards proper participation.

An underlying difficulty encountered in this study is the current level of eParticipation in the Netherlands. Many of the limitations of the measurement instrument are related to eParticipation still being in its early stages of development. Development of a measurement instrument for the more advanced stages is be useful when there is little to measure. Therefore, extension of the measurement instrument to cover the use of citizens' input and its effectiveness will be necessary to gain proper insight into eParticipation. Furthermore, the measurement of the more advanced stages as well as the effectiveness of eParticipation requires more in-depth research than measuring the ability of municipal websites to enable participation. The use of qualitative instruments such as interviews may be more useful for measuring eParticipation as it allows for investigating the details of enabling, stimulating, and processing the input of citizens, as well as inspiring learning from each other.

Conclusion

eParticipation is still in its infancy and few instruments exist that give an overview of the experiments that are undertaken by government organizations. To inspire further development, a measurement instrument used for assessing the level of eParticipation within municipalities was developed and applied to seventeen Dutch municipalities. While these municipalities undertook many eParticipation related experiments, these developments largely focused on informing and consulting citizens through deployment of informational online media. The interviews carried out in six of the municipalities revealed that they have few ideas on how to design and deploy a fullydeveloped eParticipation strategy. As the municipalities taking part in this study can be characterized as frontrunners this implies that the level of eParticipation deployment in the Netherlands is still rather low.

The instrument connects the roles citizens take on in their contact with the government, the types of online media deployed and the municipal organization. However, the instrument mainly focuses on the type of ICT being used, as this is currently how eParticipation is perceived in government organizations. For further investigations into eParticipation the measurement instrument should be extended to cover factors such as the effectiveness of the media types deployed in relation to the type of users and the inclusion of citizens' input in the decision-making processes in the organizations. Furthermore, we recommend the use of qualitative measurement instruments such as interviews to enable more in-depth assessment of eParticipation as well as to inspire learning.

Fig. 1 .Fig. 2 .

 12 Fig. 1. Spider graph of selected citizens' Internet usage roles

Fig. 3 . 3 OrganizationFig. 4 .

 334 Fig. 3. Spider graph of selected level of participation scores