Whoops, I wrote everything over the week, but just didn’t
feel good posting it. I really need to get better at doing this but I felt I
needed to look at reddit/4chan/youtube a little bit more to see both sides of
human interaction and anonymity. The topic this week I was going to call “People
Week”, but I guess now it is people day! I’ll be taking comments and replying
when I can throughout the coming week, and hope that I can possibly spur
discussion from those reading. Well lets get on with the show.
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| Also been heavily sick all this week, but that isn't going to stop me! |
To start, I figured I should observe this week’s readings in
my web 2.0 course to compare to a government’s booming e-government system.
This being the use of web 2.0 technologies to promote professional discourse
AND practice. In Dennen’s (2011) paper involving twitter use during a
professional conference, engagement though shallow was shown to be promoted and
create a connection to the conference and its information. As a survivor of the
Chicago weather at MPSA (Midwest Political Science Association) this year, the
extensive use of social media tools kept me in the loop of what to check out
and where to go, as well as helping me run into specific members of the
community, which I found really helpful. BUT, back to the topic, how does this
professional discourse at a conference relate to discourse in government?
Well in this research it was found that discourse patterns
using replies and retweets even in discourse needed “increased awareness” of
phrases (hashtags) and accessibility to fully function. It also helped in
creating information “networks” to citizens not previously in the loop,
allowing for more interest of non-attendees who were not previous networked
with attendees from this study (Dennen, 2011).
Now, when it comes to government, one of the major
realizations with public administration and appreciation of the field comes
from the respect given to it. This “Public Service Motivation” is a rather old
topic, stemming all the way back to the founding days of America under George
Washington who wanted to create a “Liberal Education” (not the same liberal you
are thinking of), as it would create appreciation of the community and those
around them as well as a respect to the service of government, possibly
enriching those to join in the process of governmental affairs and democracy,
or “Public Service Motivation” (Cook and Klay, 2014).
Putting this all together from this week’s class and then
continuing with “people week” I figured to look into the case of Brazil. From
2000 to now, Brazil has faced a revolution in the practices and uses of
e-government technology compared to a lot of countries, with it they provide
more data and information to the public, allow for requests for public
services, and registration and online services. But when it comes to “active”
participation, what I find unique is its embrace of discussion spaces via
forums, and free speech areas for complaints (Mello, 2012). “Wikipedia-style
legislation”, or the use of social media with offline legislative events
(Ferenstein,2010), reach out and create forums for all citizens to partake in
as well as those in the political arena. The end result is an online town hall
where when a “wiki style consensus” is reached, can become a concrete proposal
to representatives (Ferenstein, 2010).
This is just one of many ways, which Brazil is trying to
experiment and push for more web 2.0 applications, and those curious about
these advances, can only appreciate the testing ground Brazil has tried to
become for the people.
Sources:
Dennen, V. P. (2011). CONVERSATIONS ON THE HASHTAG:
Does Conference Twitter User Promote Professional Discourse? IADIS
International Conference e-Society, pp. 75-82.
Ferenstien, G. (2010, September 14). How Brazil is
Blazing a Trail for Electronic Democracy. Retrieved from Mashable:
http://mashable.com/2017/05/02/surgical-simulator-teaching-doctors-to-operate/
Klay, E., & Cook, S. A. (n.d.). George
Washington's Precedents: The Legacy of the American Republic's Founding Public
Administrator. Administration and Society, 1-22.
Mello, J. (2012, June 26). E-governance in Brazil.
Retrieved from the brazil business:
http://thebrazilbusiness.com/article/e-governance-in-brazil
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