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As the society has long ago left the “industrial age” and entered the “information age”, people, enterprises and above all decision makers are constantly trying to get the best out of the opportunities and the technologies offered, for facilitating their life and their work. One of the most active and promising domains nowadays, is eParticipation, which is actively promoted by all stakeholders, as there is a great need of reconnecting citizens with the decision makers and re‐engaging them into the democratic procedures, especially as during the last years this gap is expanding, with the most convincing proof being the huge figure of voter turnout during the latest European elections. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.

A review of the most active and well‐known eParticipation action pilot projects funded in the European Union is presented, alongside with a methodological framework that has been followed for mapping, assessing and evaluating those projects, using a beyond the state‐of‐the‐art classification method.

Conclusions of the performed work are in a position to outline the current status quo of eParticipation in Europe, highlighting lessons learned and opportunities for future activities and research.

This paper includes valuable information towards practitioners, decision makers and administration officials, based not only on the established knowledge and on the experiences gained, but also on the identified gaps of the domain, aiming to support them in understanding the status quo of the domain and in the design process of future research roadmaps for eGovernace and policy modelling.

This paper aims to develop and evaluate, in “real-life” pilot applications, a framework for advanced social media exploitation by government agencies in their policy-making processes to promote public participation and conduct crowdsourcing.

This framework has been developed through cooperation with public sector employees experienced in public policy-making, using both qualitative and quantitative techniques: semi-structured focus group discussions, scenarios development and questionnaire surveys. The evaluation of the framework has been conducted through semi-structured focus group discussions with public sector employees involved in the pilot applications.

A framework has been developed for advanced social media exploitation by government agencies, which is based on the automated posting of policy-related content to multiple social media, and then retrieval and processing of citizens’ interactions with it (e.g. views, likes, comments and retweets), using the application programming interfaces (API) of these social media. Furthermore, a supporting information and communication technologies (ICT) infrastructure and an application process model for it were developed. Its evaluation, based on “real-life” pilot applications, leads to useful insights concerning its capabilities, strengths and weaknesses.

The proposed framework has been evaluated in a small number of pilot applications, so further evaluation of it is required, in various types of government agencies and for different kinds of policy consultations.

The above framework enables government agencies to communicate with wider and more heterogeneous audiences in a short time and at a low cost, increase public participation in their policy-making processes, collect useful knowledge, ideas and opinions from citizens and, finally, design better, more socially rooted, balanced and realistic policies.

This research contributes to the development of knowledge concerning advanced practices for effective social media exploitation in government (which is currently limited, despite the considerable relevant knowledge developed in this area for the private sector), by developing and evaluating a framework for advanced and highly automated exploitation of multiple social media by government agencies. Furthermore, an evaluation methodology for such practices has been developed, which is based on sound theoretical foundations.

The purpose of this study is to develop a novel approach to e-participation, which is based on “passive crowdsourcing” by government agencies, exploiting the extensive political content continuously created in numerous Web 2.0 social media (e.g. political blogs and microblogs, news sharing sites and online forums) by citizens without government stimulation, to understand better their needs, issues, opinions, proposals and arguments concerning a particular domain of government activity or public policy.

This approach is developed and elaborated through cooperation with potential users experienced in the design of public policies from three countries (Austria, Greece and the UK), using a combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques: co-operative development of application scenarios, questionnaire surveys, focus groups and workshops and, finally, in-depth interviews.

A process model for the application of the proposed passive crowdsourcing approach has been developed, which is quite different from the one of the usual active crowdsourcing. Based on it, the functional architecture of the required supporting information and communication technologies (ICT) infrastructure has been formulated, and then its technological architecture has been designed, addressing the conflicting requirements: low response time and, at the same time, provision of sufficiently “fresh” content for policymakers.

Taking into account that traditionally government agencies monitor what the press writes about them, our research provides a basis for extending efficiently these activities in the new electronic media world (e.g. newspapers websites, blogs and microblogs, online forums, etc.) to understand better the needs, issues, opinions, arguments and proposals raised by the society with respect to important domains of government activity and public policies.

The proposed approach provides a new channel for the “voice” of the society to be directly communicated to the government so that the latter can design its policies and activities based on the social needs and realities and not on oversimplified models and stereotypes.

Our paper proposes a novel approach to e-participation, which exploits the Web 2.0 social media – but in a quite different way from previous approaches – for conducting “passive crowdsourcing”, and elaborates it: it develops an application process model for it and also an ICT infrastructure for supporting it, which are quite different from the ones of the existing “active crowdsourcing” approaches.

The purpose of this paper is to present how the topics of knowledge‐based development (KBD) and especially of knowledge cities (KCs) have attracted the interest of many researchers and practitioners during recent years. In a previous research work of the authors, a set of hypotheses for the design, development and operation of successful KCs are proposed and validated through the analytical study of KCs cases in support of these hypotheses, resulting in a related framework. However, the rapid changes in the field render it necessary today to re‐examine the elements which had led to the formulation of the framework, so as to update it.

The methodology followed so as to update the framework is based on the examination of the already identified KCs and the inclusion of five additional KCs cases. For the new set of KCs, the authors examine at which degree each case supports the hypotheses. Modifications in the set of hypotheses are proposed. The hypotheses that continue to be valid are considered as dominant, thus leading to the updated framework.

Among the main findings is that all cities previously examined continue to actively support their KBD, through a series of strategies and appropriate actions. The majority of the hypotheses continue to be valid, while three of them need to slightly change so as to adapt to prevailing current conditions.

The findings of this paper can be of value for researchers seeking to develop specific customized methodologies for the development of KCs.

The main added‐value elements of this paper can be considered the re‐examination of the current status of a series of successful KCs on the one side and the update of the framework for the design, development and operation of KCs on the other side.

The authors’ understanding of the Internet of things (IoT) skills and needs satisfaction for IoT devices and generational cohorts' variations remains limited as commentaries are often oversimplified and generalized. This research fills a gap in the literature by highlighting the dynamics between the IoT skills and needs satisfaction for IoT devices and seeks to expound on the variations among generational cohorts using the self-determination theory.

Survey data were obtained from 1,245 residents and IoT device users in Aksaray, Turkey. The obtained data were analyzed with variance-based structural equation modeling and the analysis of variance technique.

The results demonstrate that IoT skills determine the needs satisfaction for IoT devices. Generation Xers, Generation Yers and Generation Zers are distinct cohorts with respect to the IoT skills and needs satisfaction for IoT devices.

Collectively, this study provides empirical evidence that informs the debate about the contributions of IoT skills and generational cohorts on needs satisfaction for IoT devices. The implications and several avenues for future theory-building research are discussed.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-04-2020-0144

Despite the potential benefits of open government data (OGD) and its recent adoption by many governments, little is known about monitoring its use by the public. This paper aims to address the knowledge gap by empirically examining OGD usage in Tanzania.

A field survey design was used to gather quantitative data from 288 people in seven regions of Tanzania to facilitate an analysis of the determinants of users’ behavioural intention and use behaviour of OGD. Guided by the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology model, the study analysed the tendencies of these determinants on the use of the OGD portal.

The results show that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions affect users’ acceptance and use of the OGD portal. The results suggest that OGD initiatives should focus more on their potential applications than publication. It is important to monitor and evaluate OGD use and the conditions that allow it to continue. By linking OGD with other government initiatives, governments can build strategies, capacity and social awareness. During the development of OGD platforms for extensive reuse, new data technologies like the semantic web should be considered.

Hitherto, research has underlined the significance of OGD initiatives at large and that studies in developing countries are scarce, especially that probe the uptake of the current efforts. The present study seeks to plug this research gap by examining the use of OGD in Tanzania’s context.

This paper aims to examine major stakeholders’ communication preferences in eParticipation initiatives and discuss how this affects the public sphere. Despite the potential of social media, it has proven difficult to get people actively involved in the decision-making processes. There is a need for more research on how stakeholders manage and use social media to communicate.

The study was conducted as a qualitative case study. Data sources include interviews, social media content, document analysis and field notes.

Communication preferences of stakeholders vary according to their salience level. Stakeholders with higher salience are less likely to participate in social media, whereas those who are less salient will use every available medium to gain influence. This challenges the opportunity to create a traditional public sphere in social media.

The authors contribute to a better understanding of who participates in social media and why. Stakeholder salience analysis shows that in the case of citizen-initiated eParticipation, social media cannot be seen as a Habermasian public sphere.

The authors suggest two approaches for government officials’ handling of social media: to treat social media as a channel for input and knowledge about the concerns of citizen groups and to integrate social media in the formal processes of decision making to develop consultative statements on specific policy issues.

The study shows that power and urgency are the most important salience attributes. These findings indicate that social media may not be as inclusive as early research indicates, and less active social media users may have power and influence through other channels.

The findings extend current knowledge of the public sphere by adding the stakeholder perspective in addition to existing evaluative models of the public sphere.