Participation Sphere

Abstract

In the context of Portuguese teacher unions, the adoption of information and communication technologies is nowadays a reality. This chapter presents a brief analysis of e-participation and e-democracy, proposes a conceptual communication model for digital mediation on teachers' trade unions, and addresses an initiative carried out by the most representative teacher's union of Portugal. This proposal is based on social media principles, designed to gather teachers and unions in a shared deliberative space. The Liberopinion platform enables effective participation in formal and informal decision-making processes via the Internet, with full integration into any Website. It is improved to support Participatory budgeting. The actors were chosen from the National Federation of Teachers due to its representativeness regarding associate teachers and provide an opportunity to assess the platform potential to support participation in a union context.