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In this paper, the authors address the lack of methodologies and tools that support community and consensus processes in online settings while also acknowledging agonistic conflicts and a diversity of interest communities. The purpose of this paper is to develop a methodology and tool support for analysing discursive processes, as well as for creating structural support for better informed deliberative processes.

This participatory design is based on two case studies of urban planning projects in Swedish municipalities. An ethnographic study of information practises among municipality officials and residents exposed a need for supporting the direct communication with citizens and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), as well as democratic processes within groups.

The authors show how a general participatory methodology on different levels of governance can be supported using a standard type of interface and analytical tools for structured discussions and statistics.

The tool design has not been tested in any larger scale. The tool is at present foremost useful for communicating in participatory contexts. The actor perspective in the methodology used means that the actors, rather than organisations, are highlighted as the owners of specific questions. It also means that a survey or discussion initiated by a government can have competition from other actors using the same instruments or data.

Except for being an analytical tool for analysing participatory attributes and for better understanding of how decisions are formed, the platform also includes tools for more elaborated decision support, as well as support for voting and pro/con argumentation integrated with discussion forum for providing reasonable conditions for a broader more well-structured participation.

The actor perspective in the suggested methodology and tool support means that the actors, rather than organisations, are highlighted as the owners of specific questions. It also means that a survey or discussion initiated by a government can have competition from other actors using the same instruments or data.

This platform provides integrated analytical tools and elaborated decision support for individual users, to support democracy from a micro-perspective rather than from a government perspective, and reaches significantly beyond the capacities of similar tools and methods presently available. The traditional dichotomy between the government and the citizens in e-government research is, thus, avoided by developing a tool that takes the individual actor as the starting point rather than an abstract collective.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the adequacy of International Mine Action Standards 09.20 (IMAS 09.20) and the used standards ISO 2859 in the context of demining.

The authors show how the actual quality level acceptable quality limit (AQL) significantly affects the average total quality cost for one lot with a single sampling plan and, consequently, the average total quality cost, and as AQL increases, the cost of rejecting a lot and the cost of sampling increase.

The sampling plans for demining are not always optimal given economical and other concerns and that other mechanisms should be considered.

Addressing opportunity costs for adopting wide samplings plans instead of clearing uncleared land per default, as well as balancing producer and consumer consequences seems, therefore, to be highly relevant from a socio-economical perspective.

The general understanding of quality management and the systems involved are limited within the mine action sector. IMAS and most national mine action standards provide only a fairly narrow description of the issue. This implies that the field is missing opportunities to achieve efficiency and effectiveness, as well as to learn from and improve upon past experiences. The authors demonstrate herein that sampling provides little additional confidence as to whether a particular area is free from explosive hazards and substantial savings can be made compared to the current practice.

This study investigates how education, scientific output, and the internet complement mobile phone penetration to affect technology commodity exports in sub-Saharan Africa for the period 2000–2012. The empirical evidence is based on a generalized method of moments. The following main findings are established. The internet complements the mobile phone to boost technology goods exports and technology service exports. In addition, positive marginal effects are apparent in the roles of educational quality and scientific output on technology goods exports and technology service exports, respectively, while negative marginal impacts are apparent in the roles of scientific output and educational quality on technology goods exports and technology service exports, respectively. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

A social media user behavior model is presented as a function of different user types, i.e. light and heavy users. The users’ behaviors are analyzed in terms of knowledge creation, framing and targeting.

Data consisting of 160,000 tweets by nearly 40,000 twitter users in the city of Newark (NJ, USA) were collected during the year 2014. An analysis was conducted to examine the hypothesis that different user types exhibit distinct behaviors driven from different motivations.

There are three important findings of this study. First, light users reuse existing content more often, while heavy and automated users create original content more often. Light users also use more sentiments than the heavy and automated users. Second, automated users frame more than heavy users, who frame more than light users. Third, light users tend to target a specific audience, while heavy and automated users broadcast to a general audience.

Decision-makers can use this study to improve communication with their customers (the public) and allocate resources more effectively for better public services. For example, they can better identify subsets of users and then share and track specialized content to these subsets more effectively.

Despite the broad interest, there is insufficient research on many aspects of social media use, and very limited empirical research examining the relevance and impact of social media within the public sector. The social media user behavior model was established as a framework that can provide explanations for different social media knowledge behaviors exhibited by various subsets of users, in an e-government context.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how information and communication technology (ICT) influences openness to improve the conditions of doing business in sub-Saharan Africa.

The data were collected for the period 2000-2012. ICT is proxied with internet and mobile phone penetration rates whereas openness is measured in terms of financial and trade globalisation. Ten indicators of doing business are used, namely: cost of business start-up procedures; procedure to enforce a contract; start-up procedures to register a business; time required to build a warehouse; time required to enforce a contract; time required to register a property; time required to start a business; time to export; time to prepare and pay taxes; and time to resolve an insolvency. The empirical evidence is based on generalised method of moments with forward orthogonal deviations.

While the authors find substantial evidence that ICT complements openness to improve conditions for entrepreneurship, the effects are contingent on the dynamics of openness, ICT and entrepreneurship. Theoretical and practical policy implications are discussed.

The inquiry is based on two contemporary development concerns: the need for policy to leverage on the ICT penetration potential in the sub-region and the relevance of entrepreneurship in addressing associated issues of population growth such as unemployment.