[ecrea] IJEP 6(2) Abstract Announcement

Abstract Announcement for International Journal of E-Politics (IJEP) 6(2)

The contents of the latest issue of:
International Journal of E-Politics (IJEP)
Volume 6, Issue 2, April - June 2015
Published: Quarterly in Print and Electronically
ISSN: 1947-9131; EISSN: 1947-914X;
Published by IGI Global Publishing, Hershey, USA
www.igi-global.com/ijep

Editor(s)-in-Chief: Yasmin Ibrahim (Queen Mary, University of London, 
United Kingdom), Celia Romm Livermore (Wayne State University, USA)
Note: There are no submission or acceptance fees for manuscripts 
submitted to the International Journal of E-Politics (IJEP). All 
manuscripts are accepted based on a double-blind peer review editorial 
process.

ARTICLE 1

ICTs: Convenient, Yet Subsidiary Tools in Changing Democracy

Kerill Dunne (Independent Researcher, Dublin, Ireland)

Within Western democracies there has been a growing demand to use ICT to 
enable citizens to get more involved with local political issues. 
Western local governments have claimed that ICT can empower citizens and 
strengthen local democracy. This paper will focus on one aspect of this 
and examine the provision of online direct democracy and whether 
citizens do indeed have the opportunity to vote more in local policy 
decision making. Using Michel Foucault's concepts of power and 
domination this research will explore if local governments and their 
citizens, through strategies of power, use one type of ICT, online 
forums, to change local representative democracy. In order to examine 
whether online forums can increase direct democracy for citizens, a 
quantitative data collection method was implemented in this study which 
produced a data set of 138 online forums. This article argues that 
online forums do not increase direct democracy, because citizens along 
with local governments use ICT to maintain the political status quo online?

To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below.
www.igi-global.com/article/icts/127686

To read a PDF sample of this article, click on the link below.
www.igi-global.com/viewtitlesample.aspx?id=127686

ARTICLE 2

When SNS use Doesn't Trigger e-Participation: Case Study of an African 
Authoritarian Regime

Wairagala Wakabi (Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden), Åke Grönlund 
(Örebro University Business School, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden)

Numerous scholars have concluded that there is a correlation between use 
of social network sites (SNS), particularly for news and information 
acquisition or community building, and the likelihood for 
e-Participation. This paper examines how the use of Facebook affects the 
participative behaviours of individuals active in political and interest 
organizations and those not active in organized politics. Through focus 
group discussions involving 56 Ugandans, we conclude that in low 
internet use, authoritarian contexts, the Civic Voluntarism Model and 
the benefits Facebook brings to participation in Western democracies are 
turned on their head. Besides overwhelming detachment from politics, 
even for politically-inclined citizens, low belief in citizens' online 
actions influencing change and fear of reprisals for criticizing an 
authoritarian president in power for 29 years, severely dulled the 
appetite for e-Participation. This high cost of participation means 
Facebook is growing citizens' civic skills but it is hardly increasing 
online participation even for politically interested citizens.

To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below.
www.igi-global.com/article/when-sns-use-doesnt-trigger-e-participation/127687

To read a PDF sample of this article, click on the link below.
www.igi-global.com/viewtitlesample.aspx?id=127687

ARTICLE 3

The Politics of e-Learning: A Play in Four Acts

Celia Romm Livermore (Department of Management and Information Systems, 
School of Business Administration, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, 
USA), Mahesh Raisinghani (School of Management, Texas Woman's 
University, Denton, TX, USA,), Pierluigi Rippa (Department of Industrial 
Engineering, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy)

The goal of this research is to study the political strategies utilized 
in the context of e-Learning. The paper is based on the e-Learning 
Political Strategies (ELPoS) model. The model is based on two 
dimensions: (1) the direction of the political strategy (upward or 
downward), and (2) the scope of the political strategy (individual or 
group based). The model assumes that the interaction between these 
dimensions defines four different types of e-Learning political 
strategies, which, in turn, lead to different outcomes. The model is 
discussed in the context of the literature on e-Learning and is 
accompanied with a case study that is divided into four parts (“acts”). 
Each of the four acts provides an example of each of the four strategies 
in the model. The discussion and conclusions section integrates the 
findings from the case study, outlines the rules that govern the 
utilization of political behavior in the context of e-Learning, and 
lists the practical conclusions that can be drawn from a better 
understating of the politics of e-Learning.

To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below.
www.igi-global.com/article/the-politics-of-e-learning/127688

To read a PDF sample of this article, click on the link below.
www.igi-global.com/viewtitlesample.aspx?id=127688

ARTICLE 4

Communicative and Persuasive Strategies in the Bulgarian Parliamentary 
Elections 2014

Ognyan Seizov (University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany)

The field of political communication has long cast its eye on the 
Internet and beyond its traditional US-American focus. Nevertheless, 
research into the Web's full palette of expression means as well as 
across a wider, non-Western territory, remains modest. This paper 
analyzes how five major Bulgarian political parties presented themselves 
on the Web in one of the most heated and controversial elections since 
the fall of the totalitarian regime in 1989/1990. To shine a light on 
Bulgarian political communication, the paper takes the October 2014 
parliamentary election campaign in Bulgaria, which took place amid 
unprecedented society-wide discontent and tension. It takes a close look 
at five major parties' online platforms. It applies a multimodal 
content-analytical framework to a total of N=64 webpages. Distinct 
visual, textual, and multimodal persuasive strategies flesh out, and 
their relationships to each party's background and poll performance are 
explored.

To obtain a copy of the entire article, click on the link below.
www.igi-global.com/article/communicative-and-persuasive-strategies-in-the-bulgarian-parliamentary-elections-2014/127689

To read a PDF sample of this article, click on the link below.
www.igi-global.com/viewtitlesample.aspx?id=127689

For full copies of the above articles, check for this issue of the 
International Journal of E-Politics (IJEP) in your institution's 
library. This journal is also included in the IGI Global aggregated 
"InfoSci-Journals" database: www.igi-global.com/isj.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Mission of IJEP:

The mission of the International Journal of E-Politics (IJEP) is to 
define and expand the boundaries of e-politics as an emerging area of 
inter-disciplinary research and practice by assisting in the development 
of e-politics theories and empirical models. The journal creates a venue 
for empirical, theoretical, and practical scholarly work on e-politics 
to be published, leading to sharing of ideas between practitioners and 
academics in this field. IJEP contributes to the creation of a community 
of e-politics researchers by serving as a “hub” for related activities, 
such as organizing seminars and conferences on e-politics and 
publication of books on e-politics.

Indices of IJEP:

    ACM Digital Library
    Bacon's Media Directory
    DBLP
    Google Scholar
    INSPEC
    JournalTOCs
    MediaFinder
    Public Affairs Information Service (PAIS International)
    The Index of Information Systems Journals
    The Standard Periodical Directory
    Ulrich's Periodicals Directory
    Worldwide Political Abstracts (WPSA)

Coverage of IJEP:

The International Journal of E-Politics (IJEP) focuses on three major 
topic areas: the politics of information technology function and its 
role within organizations, the politics of virtual communities and 
social networking communities, and the role that electronic media plays 
in community activism and party politics at the local, national, and 
international levels. Within these major areas, specific topics of 
interest to be discussed in the journal include (but are not limited to) 
the following:

    E-voting and electronically enabled e-government
    Impact of globalization on the political role played by the IT unit 
within organizations
    Impact of race and gender on electronically enabled political 
manipulations
    Party politics and social activism
    Politics of diffusion of change within organizations
    Politics of social networking communities, including: learning 
communities, customers' communities, e-dating communities, gaming 
communities, support group communities, etc.
    Politics of the IT function and role in organizations
    Politics of virtual communities and social networking communities
    Politics of geographically based virtual communities
    Use of electronic media for surveillance manipulation and harassment
    Use of electronic media in industrial and labor relations
    Utilization of electronic media for governance and politicking at 
the municipal, state, national, and international levels
    Utilization of electronic media for political debate, information 
sharing, political decision making, and fundraising

Interested authors should consult the journal's manuscript submission 
guidelines 
www.igi-global.com/calls-for-papers/international-journal-politics-ijep/1147
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