The Paradox of Digital Civic Participation

Abstract

In this study, we investigate how and why paradoxes persist in digital civic participation. Our communicational lens of disorganization builds on the Communication as Constitutive of Organization, or “CCO�? approaches, and literature on multiplicity of objects and practices in order to conceptualize digital civic participation as multiple. We use our communicational approach to disorganization to analyze qualitative data of a digital civic participation project called Mesa Vision 2030. Combining iterative and situational analysis, our findings show how a controversial voting incident at Mesa was enacted in the interference of meanings across three interconnected communication episodes: real-time digital civic participation, its planning and its design. The push-pull for control over which configuration of meaning is in focus contributes a new analytic dimension for the empirical study of disorganization. Our study also makes a methodological contribution to CCO research by providing tools to analyze empirical situations for differences and heterogeneities. As a practical implication, we discuss how civic technology organizations should place greater emphasis on flexible designs of participatory tools that preserve the voices of diverse participants.