Online citizen engagement in Quebec: organizational conditions and levers of transformation
This study sheds new light on online citizen participation by explicitly showing the rules that guide government practices in this area. These comprise, mainly, a priority for neutrality and methodological rigour, the preservation of the meaning and the uniqueness of the message, the credibility of the mechanism and the quality of the content. Due to these rules, which are well entrenched in the governance of Quebec, public agencies tend to privilege a hierarchical management of citizen participation mechanisms and to therefore exercise caution with regard to social media, especially online forums. The study also shows that the Internet contributes to the consolidation of the traditional tools of public consultation in Quebec. Finally, the authors propose several ways to better exploit the deliberative and collaborative potential of new interactive platforms for citizen participation.