Through the Social Web: Citizen-led Participation in Ontario Policy-making by Karen Louise Smith A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Faculty of Information University of Toronto Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 Canada by Karen Louise Smith 2013 Through the Social Web: Citizen-led Participation in Ontario Policy-Making Karen Louise Smith Doctor of Philosophy Faculty of Information University of Toronto 2013 Abstract In the mid to late 1990s, many states developed eGovernment programs that included the use of consultation technologies. More recently, the social characteristics of the web have emerged as offering an alternative means for citizen participation, promising more openness and inclusion. In this dissertation I draw upon studies of the policy-making process and media design, to examine the implications of citizen-led production of infrastructures for public participation in policy-making through the social web and within the context of open government discourse. My research methods for this research project were ethnographically informed. I participated in the design and use of social web infrastructures for participation in policy-making as a contributor to open government communities in Ontario, Canada. I also analyzed Hansard records as well as the popular press, and interviewed 15 citizen designers who created social web based infrastructures for public participation in the policy-making of four bills in Ontario. In my research, I develop and use the term citizen designer drawing on the more common phrase of citizen journalist. Both terms suggest that citizens can engage in creative ii practices to encourage institutions such as government or the mass media to become more participatory. The citizen designers in my project were found to act as policy entrepreneurs, sometimes for particular bills, but more generally for the broader ideal of open government that includes citizen participation. The major finding of this work is that citizens are using an integrated mix of social web tools across multiple policy windows to promote openness and participation. This work contributes to the policy, information and the internet studies literatures on the roles and experiences of internet-savvy policy entrepreneurs who are situated in civil society networks, which are not always tied to formal organizations. This work also expands our understandings of citizenship to include the design and use of the social web in everyday political life. iii Acknowledgments It takes a village to help a scholar to complete her PhD. My village includes my research participants, supervisory committee, colleagues, my friends and family and also some funders. I would like to begin by thanking my research participants who shared their insights with me and made this work possible. At the university, there were many members of my village who were helpful. Foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor Andrew Clement. Andrew has been a collaborator, coach, and mentor throughout my doctoral degree. Andrew has taught me much about the work of a public intellectual. My committee members Matt Ratto and Megan Boler were also highly supportive of my project. They asked critical questions at key points that helped me to develop my work. Outside of my committee, professors Gale Moore, Leslie Shade, Cara Krmpotich and Lynne Howarth assisted me to towards the end-goal of completing my degree. A number of PhD students (or recent graduates) have provided assistance during my degree. Brenda McPhail, Joseph Ferenbok, Adam Fiser, Lisa Quirke, Diane Dechief, Tamara Shepherd, Alison Harvey, Terry Costantino, Lysanne Lessard and numerous others have been part of the process and demonstrated interest in this work. I am fortunate that my colleagues double as friends, they were willing to proofread work, provide feedback and debrief with me as the research unfolded. Personally, I was also supported by my family and friends. My parents Sid and Linda Smith and my brother Greg and his partner Jordan Hale supported me throughout the PhD process. In particular, I would like to thank my mother Linda, who proofread early drafts of this work when iv my eyes were bleary. Close friends Jen King and Adrian Ishak ensured that I continued to have a life outside of academia! Adrian was enthusiastic to take vacations to my conference destinations. Jen went as far as to cook me a pancake breakfast before my defence, only two days before she gave birth to her son. I will now turn to some administrative matters in my acknowledgements. As a PhD student, I was fortunate to receive funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada as well as support from the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. I am greatly appreciative of the funding that made my doctoral education and research possible. As a final acknowledgement, I used a variety of images in this dissertation including images I created myself, photos shared on the web under Creative Commons licences, screen shots of websites and images from reports. Within the context of this dissertation I analyze the images produced by others to conduct criticism and review as a component of my scholarly research. My uses of images from external copyrighted sources are therefore permissible under fair dealing provisions of the Copyright Act of Canada. I acknowledge the creators and sources of the images I utilize as required under fair dealing provisions. Images without acknowledgements were created by myself, the author of this dissertation. v Table of Contents 1 Participation and openness: Contested democratic values ............................................1 1.1 An introduction to democratic participation and the internet in Canada ........................5 1.2 The social web and citizen participation in democracy....................................................... 12 1.2.1 Key concepts ...................................................................................................................................................13 1.3 Openness as the current rhetoric of participation ................................................................ 24 1.3.1 Openness in Ontario ....................................................................................................................................30 1.4 Research questions........................................................................................................................... 33 1.5 Chapter overview .............................................................................................................................. 34 2 Participation pre “open” government ................................................................................. 38 2.1 Exemplary moments of citizen participation in Canada ...................................................... 39 2.2 Policy-makinG in Canada................................................................................................................. 42 2.2.1 Policy windows and policy entrepreneurs ........................................................................................43 2.2.2 How do citizens participate in policy-making?................................................................................45 2.3 From the public sphere to eDemocracy and eParticipation ............................................... 49 2.3.1 eGovernment...................................................................................................................................................50 2.3.2 eParticipation .................................................................................................................................................54 2.4 MovinG beyond public sphere models of democracy ............................................................ 55 2.5 Chapter summary.............................................................................................................................. 57 3 Research scaffoldinG.................................................................................................................. 59 3.1 Ethnography in everyday (public) life ....................................................................................... 59 3.2 ANT (Actor-network Theory)........................................................................................................ 62 3.2.1 Descriptive, politically engaged and designerly traditions.........................................................65 3.3 Concepts informing my conceptualization of the research site ........................................ 67 3.4 Research process............................................................................................................................... 72 3.4.1 Participating through political engagement at barcamps and beyond..................................73 3.4.2 Participating as designer of social web spaces for policy participation ...............................78 3.5 Tracing policy development online............................................................................................. 83 3.6 Chapter summary.............................................................................................................................. 85 4 Ontario policy narratives......................................................................................................... 87 vi 4.1 From early policy ideas to implementation ............................................................................