Study: Social Media and Political Participation

August – December 2013

This study provided an overview of a number of potential uses of ICT in political participation in the development context. The potentials, limitations, and risks of using social media to improve citizen participation were identified. Ten case studies were presented to demonstrate the bandwidth of use of social media for political participation offering insight into different forms of citizen to government and government to citizen interaction.

Engaging our broad network of international experts, each case study was authored by individuals directly involved as creators or users of the projects featured from various countries in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The study provided an assessment on the impact social media can have on the work of German development and included recommendations on how to create effective and sustainable processes and integrate social media activities in existing good governance projects.

Click here to download the paper. This study was commissioned by the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and published in March 2014.