Elections, e-petitions, community hearings, debates, livestreamed parliamentary sessions, resolutions, protocols, social media. Is it all democracy and is something more democractic than the other? In the society democracy take different forms. They can according to science be seen in 3 ideals. The most common ideal that people know of is election democracy. In democracies it takes place every 3rd to 6th year, or more, and people get to vote on how the society should look like and develop in the next term. Another ideal is the participation democracy, according to which citizens shoudl be able to participate in political influence and decisionmaking. The last one is the call, or discussion- democracy. They take shape on websites of parliaments and governments, in news papers and on Television, and in the social medias.
Information services exist in terms of democracy. Governments around the world are expected to give citizens access to what is going on. It can revolve around things like publishing calenders, contact information to elected officials, regulations, protocols, conference proceedings, case management systems, submissions of complaints and comments and more. In general there are requirements of governments to be transparent and open with what they do and what they decide. This has in the last two decades been impacted by digitalization and at the moment tools and methods for managing information delivery within public administration but also to citizens has been on the agenda.
There are many different things that are taking shape as letting citizens have a say in the political process and desicion making. The process of digitalization has increasingly played a role in politics. This can mean all of the three ideals as talk about above, with for example e-voting representing the election process, the e-petition, the digitalized petition with history back to the 13th century, letting citizens engage in the political process. It is appearing today in government, but also in business, on webpages and in social media. Social medias essentially represent the call, or discuss-, democracy, letting people talk politics on for example Twitter and Facebook.