Science and Industry

I’m currently working on my master’s thesis in political science. My topic is the examination of ten non-governmental organizations’ (NGOs’) web presence from 1990’s to 2011. This research is motivated by Stein’s (2009) and Brundin’s (2008) research, which indicate web presence is more formal one-way communication, not participatory two-way communication. However, two-way participatory communication would have several democratic effects such as empowerment of citizens.

Stein and Brudin both use only one time slot in their analysis. Still, the online media has evolved and is constantly evolving. Also, the NGOs evolve and may change their online strategy. Thus, one must use longer time span to also see the evolution and the changes.

As said, the evolution of web presence is constant and there are several factors that affect the online presence. For example, the changing role of online media, which is now media of the masses, may affect this presence. It may also be technological advantages on the media itself or the trends and styles of online media in any given time. Or, it may be changes in the hosting organization and their thinking and acting.

Here I limit my research to only two questions:

1. The institutionalization process of the hosting organization creates less participatory environment in the organization. This will also affect the web presence, making it less participatory.
2. The mega-trend of Web 2.0, meaning here the focus on user generated content and platformalization of this media, in means such as blogs or social networking sites, creates demand for participatory approach. This also means that due to platformalization the more participatory channels are available for NGO use.

Based on my analysis of ten NGOs, I can now focus especially on the second hypothesis and later report on my findings with the first one. It seems that even while the Web 2.0 has an effect on NGO web presence, we may not conclude that the sites as such are participatory, focused on dialogue between NGO and citizens. It seems that the change has made it possible to comment and react to NGO’s actions and views. However, the agenda is set by NGOs’ themselves.

Secondly, based on this sample it seems that most of the organizations don’t participate in the dialogue even while it has been made possible for citizens. This is a classical and well-reported problem in e-democracy domain, which may lead to frustration and therefore decreased motivation to participate.

As said, these are early results that still require more analysis and further thinking. Unluckily, my master’s thesis is written in Finnish, but those who want may follow the development of weekly snapshots.

One may question the practical use of this research. Even while I have analyzed NGOs, the same results may be applied to governmental organizations and businesses. Thus, one end result of my master’s thesis is hopefully a set of recommendations on the creation of a participatory online community.

Tags: ngo, participation, social media

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 27th, 2011 at 7:28 pm and is filed under Helsinki Institute for Information Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.