The Constitution Unit Blog

Menu

Skip to content
  • Home
  • Constitutional Standards and the Health of Democracy
  • Brexit
  • Parliament
  • Elections and referendums
  • Democratic Engagement and Citizens’ Assemblies
  • Government
  • Devolution
  • Events
  • About the Constitution Unit
  • Copyright
  • Judiciary and human rights
  • Parties and politicians
  • Constitutions and constitution making
  • Freedom of information
  • Monarchy, church and state

Tag Archives: driven grouse shooting petition

Do parliamentary e-petitions debates enhance public engagement?

Posted on February 19, 2019 by The Constitution Unit

Cristina.Leston.Bandeira1.jpgIMG_20190218_125630Over 40,000 e-petitions have been submitted to parliament since the current system was introduced in 2015. Cristina Leston Bandeira and Viktoria Spaiser have conducted research into how the public views the consequent parliamentary discussion of issues raised in these petitions by analysing comments made by those watching the live parliamentary coverage. Their findings lead them to conclude that parliamentary debates should be adapted to be more inclusive of the original petitions’ aims.

Parliament introduced an e-petitions system in 2015 with the aim of enhancing its relationship with the public. The system has seen extraordinary levels of usage, with over 40,000 e-petitions submitted and plenty of other evidence of very considerable engagement from the public, such as petitions debates regularly being the most read debates on Hansard. The extraordinary usage is only one element of this new system, however. At the Centre for Democratic Engagement, we have been investigating it, focusing in particular on the more subtle expressions of engagement, beyond usage numbers. We have interviewed petitioners, developed participant observation, and analysed petitions data, parliamentary documentation and social media activity associated with e-petitions.

Some of this research has now started to come out, namely our latest article in Policy & Internet, where we use natural language processing, machine learning and social network analysis of Twitter data to explore what it shows about the extent of people’s engagement, the contents of Twitter e-petition conversations, who is taking part and how they interact. In this blog post we focus on how the public react to the format of the e-petitions parliamentary debates, through their comments on Twitter whilst they watch these debates. Our findings provide interesting insights into how people perceive the e-petition procedures in terms of fairness and responsiveness, suggesting that petition parliamentary debates could be more inclusive of the original petitions’ aims. Continue reading →

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Reddit
  • Email
  • Print & PDF

Like this:

Like Loading...
Posted in digital democracy, Parliament, Public Engagement and Policy Making | Tagged big data analysis, Centre for Democratic Engagement, Cristina Leston-Bandeira, democratic engagement, driven grouse shooting petition, e-petitions, parliamentary debates, petitions, Petitions Committee, petitions debates, Twitter, Viktoria Spaiser

The Constitution Unit Website

Monitor 83: Sunak’s constitutional dilemmas

New Report: Public Preferences for Integrity and Accountability in Politics

New Report: Reforming the Prerogative


Enter your e-mail address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by e-mail.

Join 2,523 other subscribers

Unit Mailing List: Sign up to receive notifications of of our events, newsletter and publications

Link to Join the Unit's Mailing list
Blog at WordPress.com.
  • Follow Following
    • The Constitution Unit Blog
    • Join 1,691 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • The Constitution Unit Blog
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: