E-participation in Portuguese local governments: evaluation of deployment and adherence of web 2.0 technologies

Abstract

The integration of web 2.0 into governmental sphere has changed the way governments interact with their citizens, strengthening electronic participation mechanisms. The present study aims to evaluate web 2.0 infrastructures of Portuguese local governments and assess citizens' adherence to the most widespread web 2.0 applications present on their official portals. According to the study results, 73% of 308 Portuguese local governments have already incorporated one of the web 2.0 technologies, being social networking the most widespread one, used by approximately half of them. Evaluation of citizens' adherence to official Facebook, YouTube and Twitter pages of local governments have shown that Portuguese citizens from middle and large sized cities seem to be more likely to adhere to the official pages of local authorities than the European citizens from the countries analysed in another study. Besides, the data revealed that the smaller local government is the higher adherence rate it has.