Las Redes Sociales, una potente herramienta al servicio del Open Government

Abstract:

Societies are continually changing and the rhythm of social changes highly depends on the technological advances that may emerge. Well, it is obvious that the developments that have taken place in the last two decades of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century in the field of communication, have revolutionized the way we interact between human beings, and therefore, with the different social actors who compose the social-political sphere. This deep communication conversion has resulted in generating a higher demand for information on the part of citizens, as well as in a contents consumption unparalleled in the history of the humanity. Citizens require and demand a greater participation in the political decision-making, as well as a major demand for transparency in governance and, as could not be otherwise, an increase of the controls and accountability. There is no doubt that throughout this process, the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT's) play a key role. In this case, Open Government (Ogov) is constituted as a main actor in the strategy's implementation of the New Technologies in the public sphere, and within this one, social networks play a leading role as a tool of bidirectional communication G2C-A2C and C2G-C2A. This paradigm shift requires a revitalization of the political model, and more specifically an evolution of modern democracy, becoming more significant the concept of Deliberative Democracy. The purpose of this study is to define the important role of social networks as a strategic element within the paradigm of Open Government, and the trascendental Ministry that this concept is going to experience in the coming years regarding to the substantial improvement of the advanced democracies. In the first place, we shall draw an approach to the theoretical framework that sustains the concept of deliberative democracy, as the ideal support of the Open Government archetype. Subsequently we will conceptualize Open Government and social networks. We'll also establish the links between these new technologies and a possible step towards the strengthening of Democracy based on deliberation, and will formulate the hypothesis of this study. Afterwards, we will analyze the results particularly obtained by two governmental initiatives: an Ogov platform and a Social Media strategy inside the same Public Administration, which is the Basque Government, and will also investigate a popular initiative within the environment of the social networks, as well as its aftereffects and most relevant data.

Área(s) temática(s):