E-Transformation of Municipalities and Social Media's Role on e-Participation in European e-Municipalities

The advancements in information and communication technologies (ICT) have created a solid transformation in each governmental organization such as municipalities. The electronic transformation of governmental organizations, for instance e-municipalities, have transformed offline services into online. The goal of the electronic transformation of governmental organizations is to create a citizen centric government with high accountability and transparency rates. To sustain the goal of the governmental e-transformation, e-democracy should be implemented in depth; and to implement e-democracy, e-participation of citizens should be encouraged. Municipalities are a feasible governmental organization to identify the existence and e-participation support level in a country because of the propinquity between the citizens and municipalities. In this article, at first e-municipality, e-democracy and e-participation concepts are discussed and social media’s role on creating e-participation is emphasized with United Nation’s digital participation reports. Finally, social media usage research that is conducted on municipalities of European capitals is shared to identify the e-participation level in European local governments. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2013.v2n9p38