New Social Media as a Tool for Citizen Engagement with the Government

Social media as a platform for expression, socializing and political engagement - platforms that were once focused on the establishment and development of social networks and activities, that are now an object and subject of discussion when it comes to citizen engagement. The question, however, is, who engages who? Is there referred to a citizen as a body that can be engaged by a government through new social media? Or is it a citizen that engages a government through the channels of new social media, instrumentalizing platforms to make voices heard and to advocate for political change?
While the use of social media platforms will differ per country, in terms of applications used, but also in terms of the kind of discussions that are de facto or de jure allowed to take place, the rise of new social media does seem to facilitate a platform for citizens to express their opinions and interests, in a cross-border context, where political activities might no longer necessarily be bound to the de facto or de jure borders of a territory, a state. At the same time, people are located in a physical territory, restricted by the laws and regulations in place, influenced by the political culture, in a specific area.
In the era we find ourselves in now, we witness an increasing volume of cross-border protests and political activities that are enabled by the digital, oftentimes through the medium of social media platforms. In this aspect, the digital facilitates the physical; a newly established pre-requisite for cross-border political participation, activation, engagement.
In this panel, we invite scholars to contribute papers that are not only related to the use of new social media as a tool for citizen engagement with government, rather, to explore how new social media facilitates bottom-up change - as real change comes from within.
We invite papers on topics such as;
New social media as a platform to facilitate bottom-up change
New social media and cross-border political participation
Comparative cases between traditional citizen engagement and new social media citizen engagement
Comparative cases between new social media citizen engagement in different regions