Are political parties' online platforms a participatory tool -through which political participation is practiced- for citizens?: The example of iSYRIZA, an online political platform from Greece

• Autor(a) principal: Sidiropoulou, Anna
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/28030
• topic: Participatory tool; Digital platform; Democracia participativa -- Participatory democracy; Digital parties; Participação política -- Political participation; Ferramenta participativa; Plataforma digital; Partido digital

Research about democratic theory in the context of modern societies is always relevant. Especially with the momentum of Information and Communication Technology, that showcases millions of technology users, saves the day during global pandemics and is used as a -traditional or not- tool for political participation. Moreover, the many examples of traditional political institutions experimenting with new technology, or the aspiring projects of political software, used by organisations, are a call to action. With this research we aim at exploring whether citizens perceive online platforms as participatory tools, where they can engage in political practice. In order to do that, we focus to the online platform “iSyriza”, created by the Greek political party SYRIZA, informing this study with literature from the fields of e-democracy, political parties and ICTs and political participation online. Political participation is addressed in the context of Participatory Democracy theory. The questions we pose are whether citizens perceive iSyriza as a participatory tool, if there are characteristics that foster political participation and whether such participation would follow the tradition of participatory democracy. We employ three focus group discussions with the purposive sampling method. Findings suggest that although the platform functions as an informative source, participants do not perceive it as participatory. Future research can expand this by testing a wider audience on the characteristics as they emerged from the data analysis.