Drawing on critical considerations of the so called “electronic democracy”, the paper empirically explores to what extent the internet tools provided by the local governance institutions in the course of electronic democ- racy are enabling the expression of the “voices of citizens” as well as participation in decision making. Content analysis of questions and answers stemming from the official webpage of one Lithuanian municipality has been conducted; altogether, the sample entails 310 questions or suggestions of citizens and answers from the municipality. The results show that participation of citizens via internet-based voice opportunities represents a trivialization of participation issues by mainly constructing the citizens as complain-holders about everyday issues. Participation by influencing political decisions could not be obtained.

Article in: English

Article published: 2014-05-21