The Public Value of Sense of Community in eParticipation

Concerns over a decline in social capital have been noted resulting from reduced civic and political engagement; recently however, the impact of Web 2.0 has been proposed as a revolutionary force to redress this deficit enabling greater participation by citizens and reinvigorating civic society. eParticipation is an increasingly important area of study to evaluate the promise of social media technologies to engage citizens in the democratic decision making process. This paper responds to the challenge by introducing the public administration paradigm of Public Value to eParticipation research in order to conceptualize and evaluate key issues of value, power, democratic participation and the quality of the decision process. This study introduces Sense of Community (SOC) to the eParticipation research field and highlights the important mediating effects of (SOC) to critical Public Value outcomes. Through the Public Value lens, the quality of the decision making process is reflected in the legitimacy of the public policy mandate; for eParticipation this means looking for ways to improve the quality of the decision making process. The aim of this research is to create a new measure of SOC for eParticipation that is based on Public Value theory.