Call for articles to be published in a special issue of the Journal of Information Technology and Politics (JITP) "Understanding eParticipation" Special Issue Guest Editors: Ann Macintosh – mailto:A.Macintosh@napier.ac.uk Åke Grönlund – mailto:ake.gronlund@esi.oru.se eParticipation describes efforts to broaden and deepen participation in societal decision making processes by enabling citizens to connect with one another, with public officials and with their elected representatives using information and communication technologies. Processes involved include both directly political ones such as petitioning and consultations and indirectly political ones such as city planning processes. eParticipation is an exciting and challenging research area, which requires a novel combination of technical, social and political measures. This special issue discusses the core and the borders of the research field by means of theoretical and empirical contributions. Topics include but are not limited to: * Current and emergent eParticipation technological infrastructures; * Current and emergent eParticipation methods; * Criteria and methods for evaluation of eParticipation initiatives to be undertaken in a systematic and standardised way; * The business case of eParticipation: Drivers and barriers; * Theories and contextual analysis of eParticipation. Manuscripts should have significant theoretical and empirical roots, preferably in both social/political science and IT, but should at least contain significant content in both areas. Submission Authors must submit an article to the special issue editors by February 1, 2007. Submission will be double-blind reviewed by regular JITP reviewers. Notification of review results will be sent out by March 30, 2007. Authors may be asked to revise their paper. Revised and copy-edited manuscripts must be submitted by May 1, 2007. For formatting and writing guidelines, please consult the JITP author guidelines at http://www.jitp.net/files/instructions.pdf. The Journal of Information Technology and Politics (JITP) publishes individually- and jointly-submitted research papers of exceptional quality from any disciplinary background focused on topics related to the interface between information technology (IT) and politics. Research papers are theory-driven manuscripts, focusing on an important intersection of politics and IT and reporting substantial findings of interest to a broad community of researchers, practitioners, and students. We seek in particular manuscripts that provide cutting-edge theories, methods, and findings for the study of IT and politics. For more information, see: http://www.jitp.net . -- Dr. Stuart W. Shulman Assistant Professor School of Information Sciences Graduate School of Public and International Affairs Director, Qualitative Data Analysis Program http://qdap.ucsur.pitt.edu University Center for Social and Urban Research University of Pittsburgh 121 University Place, Suite 600 Pittsburgh, PA 15260 412.624.3776 (v) 412.624.4810 (f) http://shulman.ucsur.pitt.edu Editor, Journal of Information Technology and Politics http://www.jitp.net