The non-government and voluntary sector, ICT, and democracy - introduction to the special issue

Abstract

Online tools make large scale organisation of volunteer activities easier at the same time as the public sphere is becoming more difficult to navigate, demanding an ever higher level of digital literacy of those who want to participate. NGOs play an important role in creating and maintaining alternative public spheres by providing not only infrastructure, but by accommodating people’s need to belong, for recognition and for places to meet.
This special issue contains contributions from research that examines, in different ways, how the voluntary sector uses ICT to support both internally, its democratic structures, and externally, democracy in the community. The authors represented in this issue come from a variety of disciplines such as computer science, economics, political science and informatics, and the studies they present come from four different continents covering the use of online phenomena such as crowdsourcing, community journalism, blogging and social media.