La thèse étudie les applications dites citoyennes pour mobiles et web qui sont développées en réponse aux problèmes publics variés et basées sur le principe de crowdsourcing. Elle s’intéresse à la fois à la conception de ces dispositifs, à leurs usages et aux façons dont ces outils transforment la communication des citoyens entre eux, et avec les pouvoirs publics. Elle explore les nouveaux formats d’innovation, comme les hackathons civiques, et interroge l’usage du code informatique en tant que nouvel instrument d’action collective.La thèse mobilise une méthodologie qui puise dans les répertoires des STS, de la sociologie des problèmes publics, de la science politique, des sciences de l’information et communication. Appuyée sur l’étude d'applications citoyennes en France et en Russie, elle pose différentes questions : comment traduit-on les problèmes publics en code informatique ; qu’est-ce que ces applications font et font faire ?; comment transforment-elles la participation citoyenne ?La recherche montre que les interfaces des applications façonnent et standardisent la participation en se basant sur les documents de référence : les lois, les réglementations normatives et techniques. Cependant, la standardisation a ses limites : se focalisant sur les moments de faille et des épreuves, telles que les tests, les mises à jour, le débogage des applications, l’enquête rend visibles les détournements et les bricolages mis en place par les usagers qui dépassent le cadrage par les interfaces et participent à la fois à la réécriture des applications et à la redéfinition des problèmes publics.La comparaison entre applications développées par les administrations publiques et projets portés par la société civile permet de distinguer deux façons de communiquer : les chaînes courtes et les chaînes longues. Sans les opposer, la thèse se place dans « l’entre-deux » et analyser les articulations, les agencements de ces réseaux socio-techniques. / The PhD dissertation studies new digital participative technologies called "civic apps", applications for mobile and web developed in response to a large scope of public problems and based on the principle of crowdsourcing. The research focuses on the conception of these tools, their usages and the way these tools transform the communication among citizens and between citizens and public administrations. It also explores new formats of civic tech innovation, such as civic hackathons, and question the usage of programming code as a new tool of collective action.The thesis calls upon the methodologies of sociology of science and technology, sociology of public problems, political science and science of information and communication. Based on a case-study of several civic apps in France and Russia, the inquiry adresses the following question: how does the translation of public problems into programming code occur ? And how do these applications transform civic participation?The research shows that the interfaces standardize and format the practices of participation, using documents such as laws, technical norms and standards. However, this standardization has its limits. Focusing on the moments of failure and trial, such as tests, updates or debug of applications, the inquiry highlights the practices of bricolage and detournement, deployed by users in order to overcome the framing by design and participate in the rewriting of the applications.The thesis compares civic applications with the applications developed by public administrations and distinguishes two models of communication called the "long chains" and the "short chains". However, instead of opposing administrative and civic initiatives, the thesis proposes to think from "in-between", analyzing the articulations and arrangements of these socio-technical networks.

Operative feedback between authors of publications and readers as well as between readers themselves determines considerable growth of portals with commenting functions. Unfortunately, the advantages of commenting are not used in the portals of public institutions. Therefore, this paper surveys internet commenting influence in the e-democracy development, involving the communities into decision making processes. The paper investigates, if the electronic discussions can support realization of principles of publicity, society interests importance and community involvement into the public management, mainly highlighted in theory of public administration and new public management. The main problem, why commenting functions are not being deployed in the portals of institutions, is inefficiency of commenting process regulation. So far used methods of comments regulation – simple moderation and automoderation – are inefficient (slow, subjective) when there are huge amount of users, consequently, these methods do not fit to the portals of public institutions. This paper surveys new method of commenting regulation – comoderation – which is based on user self-regulation and comment rating, consequently, more efficient. So, adopting of comoderation in the portals could provide a powerful tool for fast and purposeful changing of ideas between officials and citizens. The investigation of commenting and comment rating needs in the portals of institutions is performed due to purpose to... [to full text]

With the increased significance of information technology (IT) in today’s society the term ‘electronic democracy’ (e-democracy) has gained much importance within the democracy theory. Naturally, there are several competing views on how the technology should be used for democratic purpose. One aspect of this is the somewhat revitalized claim for direct democracy in accordance with the hypothetical opportunity to finally realize it as a democratic system. The ideal of direct democracy combined with the almost total credence in the potential of technology constitute the idea of a ‘push-button democracy’. The term has to a large extent been used by critics to the idea. However, it does also figure as a generic term describing this ‘new’ claim for direct democracy. This essay seeks in a qualitative normative and theoretical way, to assess the plausibility of the idea of the push-button democracy in relation to classical democracy theory. In excess of the debate of direct versus representative democracy, the analysis seeks to give a normative approach on how information technology should be applied. The result of the analysis consists of a number of predicted implications with the realization of the push-button democracy, especially concerning the democratic process in regard to decision making. Furthermore, it is reasoned whether this utopian system is desirable, even from a principal view. Finally, the discussion concludes with a stance of policy that information technology should be used as a mean for the existing representative democracy, rather than a goal, in order to create a different political system.

自一九八Ｏ年代起，現代資訊與通訊科技(Information and Communication Technology or ICT)、電腦中介傳播(Computer-Mediated Communication or CMC)、網際網路(Internet)及全球資訊網(World Wide Web or WWW)的發展和普及化，已被學者、政治人物、以及論者們認為是可用以加強實踐公民參與及民主政治之有效工具。本研究即探討政府如何透過網際網路來提供公民參與機制。 本研究以網際網路之公民參與機制的理論為基礎，建構一個完整的網際網路之公民參與機制，亦即建構一個理想的網路公共論壇版面。並檢視台北市政府於全球資訊網網站上之公共論壇版面的運作現況及其成效，檢驗其中公民參與公共事務價值的實踐程度。最後，將探討網際網路之公民參與機制的實踐會有哪些侷限，應如何加以突破，藉此提供學術界及實務界研究貢獻。 / Since the 1980's, many scholars, statesmen, and researchers have come to realize that the development and popularity of modern Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Computer-mediated Communication (CMC), Internet, and the World Wide Web (WWW) will become the effective mechanism for citizen participation. The main purpose of this research paper is to study how government provides citizen participation through Internet. First, the paper will take the theory of Internet citizen participation to construct an ideal mechanism of Internet citizen participation, i.e., to build an ideal operational procedural of Internet Public Forum. Second, the paper will use Taipei City Government's "Citizen Forum" in the World Wide Web as a case study to compare and analyze this case with the ideal operational procedural of Internet Public Forum. Last, the paper will discuss the constraints of Internet citizen participation, and search for solutions to these constraints.

The diploma thesis examines new phenomena of electronic democracy which is becoming more popular with the internet expansion. The thesis summarizes existing research in the field of electronic democracy from a view of forms that could be or are taken. The aim of this summarization is to show that new transformational changes affecting our society do not automatically implicate a shift towards direct democracy. Using theoretical summarization a state of the art of electronic democracy in the Czech Republic is described. Importance is given to an analysis of contemporary evolving tools and initiatives which were developed from two directions - top-down and a bottom up. A part of this analysis is an assessment of important factors that are stimulating a development of electronic participation - freedom of information right, internet penetration and computer literacy.