Public participation and the use of social media in the South African parliament

Abstract

ABSTRACT The study focuses on the use of social media in parliamentary processes of public participation, especially when processing legislation. It first identifies the tools that make social media platforms available through ICT infrastructure and its projected growth in the future. This is important in order to understand the current access to the Internet by citizens and future projections of the Internet as a basis for social media platforms. The use of social media will be more easily promoted when citizens have greater access, hence the need to first consider issues of access. The literature review reveals limited information on the use of social media for public participation by parliaments. Neo-Marxist theory informs a theoretical framework of the study, as participation is viewed as an empowerment process for citizens. The use of social media can be enhanced, especially when all citizens have access to the Internet and will thus have access to social media. While the current methods of public participation are working, there is opportunity for enhancement. Qualitative research methodology was used for this study. A questionnaire was used to collect data that was analyse and interpreted to provide the findings of this study. It is out of the information received that it was clear that, the current use of social media by the parliament of the Republic of South Africa is limited to information-sharing rather than engagement platforms, and not all Members of Parliament are active on social media. There is only one account for Parliament on Facebook and one account on Twitter. There is thus a need for an increased presence of Parliament in the social media platforms.