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How Online Lurking Contributes Value to
E-Participation
A Conceptual Approach to Evaluating the Role of Lurkers in E-Participation
Noella Edelmann
Department for E-Governance and Administration
Danube University Krems
Krems, Austria
noella.edelmann@donau-uni.ac.at
Robert Krimmer
Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance
Tallinn University of Technology
Tallinn, Estonia
robert.krimmer@ttu.ee
Peter Parycek
Department for E-Governance and Administration
Danube University Krems
Krems, Austria
peter.parycek@donau-uni.ac.at
Abstract— This conceptual paper looks at the online behavior
known as lurking, the value of lurking and how it contributes to
e-participation and innovation in public administrations. Online
lurking is often defined using negative terms, but it is argued in
this paper that positive definitions may be more appropriate and
using Takahashi’s definition of “active lurkers” can show how
online participation that is not visible may have an impact in
online participation and e-participation by engaging in activities
such as listening, acting as an audience, using, propagating and
sharing knowledge. This works represents a contribution to a
more differentiated understanding of online participation. It aims
to show that lurking represents many online behaviors that may
not always be visible, but are important in online contexts, as
they represent participants who are active and may contribute
valuable and innovative information. The role and value of
lurkers is considered in general for online participation and
specifically for e-participation and public administration.
Keywords— lurking; e-participation; public administrations;
innovation; public value
I. INTRODUCTION
Online sociability, participation and collaboration are
important, fundamental human activities and reflect some of
the ways people use the internet: “sociability is one of our core
capabilities and it shows up in almost every aspect of our lives
as both cause and effect” [1, p. 14]. The internet is a place to be
“social” and “participative”[2, p. 3], [3], and is about
“connecting people not computers” [4, p. 30]. Digital and
collaborative, user-driven tools help increase the number of
network connections, interaction between people, aggregation
of information and development of innovative content - as seen
with eBay, YouTube, Facebook [5] blogs, podcasts and wikis
[4] to mention but a few. These tools encourage values such as
contribution, inclusion, openness, informality and equality
based on horizontal communication, sharing information, and
equal rights in the creation and use of information, values that
are also becoming increasingly important in the public sector.
A report by the European Commission [6] makes clear that
such values are important as they contribute to the creation of
public value and innovation within the public sector.
Governments are indeed under pressure to achieve many aims
such as to increase the productivity of the public sector,
develop more citizen-centric services, achieve better outcomes
and enhance democratic participation. Some scholars argue that
given the digital technologies presently available, governments
are in a “golden era” for achieving valuable and innovative
outcomes [5], [7], [8]. Next to “classic” e-voting [9], different
online technologies can be used to mobilize and encourage
individuals, groups and communities to participate in public
decision-making [10], giving citizens not only the opportunity
to participate and impact public policy goals but also to
contribute to the innovation of public administrations. But
evaluations of online public participation (e-participation)
initiatives reveal low levels of participation because of e.g. a
lack of adequate methods and tools for online participation,
there is no systematic approach to the involvement of citizens
in the co-creation of public value, and new solutions are not
established or implemented [6], [11], [12]. Another reason may
that e-participation is often evaluated solely in terms of the
visible postings made by participants, thus limiting the
evaluation of the impact of online participation and e-
participation. By considering that a variety of online behaviors
that are possible but not always visible, allows a broader
evaluation e-participation, especially in the context of the
numerous aims of e-participation. This conceptual paper, based
on an extensive literature review, is an answer to the question
as to whether online lurking can be considered as a valuable
online behavior in the context of e-participation. This is a
question that cannot be answered simply by collecting
978-1-5090-4830-4/17/$31.00 © 2017 IEEE
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extensive empirical results or simply getting more factual
information, so the authors consider the evidence in the
literature to reflect upon that area of online participation that
exists between non-participation and the minimum visible
participation (clicking the “like” button), as well as how
lurkers’ non-visible behaviors can be valuable and contribute to
innovation in public administration.
II. ONLINE CITIZEN PARTICIPATION (E-PARTICIPATION)
Opportunities for public participation may be initiated by
governments and public authorities, and, by providing both the
means necessary for including citizens and the necessary
power(s), so incorporate citizens’ concerns, needs and values
into policy and decision-making processes [13], [14]. In the
real (offline) world, citizen inputs to policy and political
decision-making can be made in many ways such as
participating in political manifestations, distributing leaflets,
raising or donating money, engaging in discussions and
relations with politicians, working for a political party, even
just showing up, talking, listening, baking cookies, serving on
committees, and organizing activities [15, p. 352]. Citizens
may also demand opportunities for interaction and participation
in the public matters and policies that affect them [16], [17].
With e-participation, governments and public administrations
use the available digital technologies so as to:
• Reach a wider audience to enable broader participation;
• Support participation through a range of technologies to
cater for the diverse technical and communicative skills
of citizens;
• Provide relevant information in a format that is both
more accessible and more understandable to the target
audience to enable more informed contributions;
• Engage with a wider audience to enable deeper
contributions and support deliberative debate [18].
Citizens and governments alike are to benefit from the e-
participation activities [19], [20] such as more engaged citizen
participation, greater efficiency, deeper transparency, and
higher service quality. access citizen skills, knowledge and
intelligence [21], [22]. By finding new ways of “tapping into
people’s experiences and needs, then feeding them into the
making of laws and policy” [23, p. 11], e-participation is to
improve the relationship between citizens and policy-makers
[24]. The range of tools help governments and public
administrations access citizens’ knowledge and skills, have
more detailed knowledge of the public’s needs, generate citizen
awareness, acceptance and commitment to policies, increase
the government’s decision-making quality and legitimacy, and
encourage citizenship and societal solidarity. Tools for
collaboration and cooperation such as file repositories, blogs,
file sharing, and ICT-mediated interaction such as email, online
discussions, Skype, chatting, voice-over-IP-communication,
Facebook and Twitter have been taken up by the formal
political system. There has been a massive growth in
governments’ implementation and employment of user-driven
applications such as blogs, podcasts, wikis and social
networking, feedback forums, online portals, collaborative
platforms, and applications for mobile phones[4]. Social media
is used as it helps discover and attract members with shared
interests, exchange information, make group decisions,
integrate individual contributions, supervise groups using less
hierarchy, and manage group logistics. E-government portals,
user-centred-platforms, mobile government, e-petitions and
collaborative platforms partnerships, invited spaces, or
deliberative spaces [25] are forms of public online participation
that are to encourage participative online behaviors such as
generating and responding to messages, organizing discussion
or contributing knowledge and content. Involving the citizens
through the horizontal exchange of information with other
users [26], or in terms of “crowdsourcing” [27], citizens are to
be active actors, contributors and co-creators in the
participation processes and the development of innovative
public services. Interactivity, communications and tools
promise “coproduction on an unprecedented scale” [28, p.
446].
The desired outcomes of such public participation have
many labels, such as collaborative government, wiki
government, open government, DIY government, government
as platform, collaborative governance, public-private
partnerships [28], [29]. But e-participation is complex and has
many aims. The internet is to help and enable government
agencies not only to restructure their interactions with citizens,
but also be an indicator of a governance challenge rather than a
means to an end only [30], fostering voting behavior [28],
deepening democracy and egalitarian citizenship [31],
increased government efficacy and quality of the services [32],
positive social change [33], social-capital-building activities
[34], and achieve open, transparent and collaborative
government. In addition to these aims, a further aim is to
reduce costs [10].
III. PARTICIPATING IN E-PARTICIPATION
Businesses and public institutions want citizens and
amateurs to participate and provide content [35], as the internet
seems to overcome a number of difficulties found in offline
situations. Surveys show that 85% of American adults go
online [36] and 73% of online adults use least one social
network [37]. Many online connections and behaviors
represent users engaged in discussion, interaction and
contributions [38], connecting, networking, generating and
producing content [39]. E-participation relies on such online
connections and engagement between actors. But online
behaviors and connections do not necessarily have be visible,
e.g. accessing information, interactions, sharing, aggregating
and forwarding information or links [40], but are still
important, necessary and valuable for public participation. In
terms of public and political participation Vecchione and
Caprara [41] suggest that people will participate if they believe
that they can exert some influence over political events, even at
the cost of personal risk. But research by Nam [42] finds that in
the US, 12% are not at all and 20% are not very interested in
political activities, 49% are somewhat and 19% very interest in
political activities. In terms of their use of the internet for
political activities, 18% see themselves as actively and 35% as
moderately actively participating, whilst 47% report never
participating. Of those who have been involved with online
political information, 17% have visited political websites and
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14% have shared online political information. Ferro and
Molinari [43] identify four types of citizens in e-participation,
and they conclude that only a small share of the population are
“Activists” (less than the 15-20% as stated by Forrester
Research [44]), users who spend most of their spare time
creating and sharing their own agendas by means of personal
blogs, wikis etc., and responding to political calls. The
“Socialisers” represent 19% of the total internet users, and this
figure includes the youngest generation who use online tools
extensively, but, as they have a low interest in politics, it is not
clear to what extent they interact with public institutions. A
third group are the “Connected”, who best represent society as
a whole (e.g. families, businesses, professionals etc.), as they
are those who may spend a time on the internet, but neither use
online public services regularly nor respond to online political
calls. A final group is the “Unplugged”, those with low
income, poor education, or a marginalized status or living in
isolated locations (rural areas) and who have never used a
computer in their lifetime. At the time of the study, this
category still represents about 40% of the European population.
Some scholars believe that whilst people are increasingly
aware of the public policy issues, the tools and the
opportunities that enable citizen participation, citizens are none
the less disengaging from formal politics, reflected by low
levels of voter turnout, declining numbers of membership in
political parties, and a widespread loss of trust in government,
politicians and institutions and processes is decreasing [45],
[46]. It may also be that citizens want interaction that is limited
to casting a vote every few years [47], but research reveals that
low levels of interaction and participation may be due to
governments who see citizens as passive consumers and do not
encourage the development of (digital) citizenship [48], [49].
Others scholars argue that opportunities for online political
participation are seen as primarily benefiting elites with the
technological resources and motivations to take advantage of
the resources [42]. Ferro and Molinari believe that over the
years governments have turned into “closed bureaucratic
institutions with only sporadic contacts with their
constituencies” [43, p. 10].
Scholars and researches have thus come to the conclusion
there are only low levels of online citizen participation [12],
[50] and provided some answers as to why this may be so. But
an alternative explanation may be that evaluations of e-
participation often focus on the active users only, often
exclusively understood as the visible participants and the
visible online behaviors. This is because the number of users,
user involvement, user participation are often seen as the main
indicator of online value and success, sometimes considered to
be even more important than profitability [51]. Because e-
participation is often evaluated in terms of the number of
visible comments only, many civic platforms and networks are
deemed as not as successful as expected, with participation
processes that do not lead to resolutions or conclusions, are
abandoned, or end up being empty, with no interaction at all
[21]. However high the visibility, popularity and enthusiasm
for online projects, online participation has never been evenly
distributed among users [52]. Low levels of participation
characterize the online environment, even in the successful
communities, and the process of digital inclusion has not yet
reached its aims [43]. According to Nielsen [53] user
participation follows a “90-9-1 rule”, where 90% of users are
lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don't contribute), 9% of
contribute from time to time, and 1% of users participates a lot
and account for most contributions. The “1% rule” states that
the number of people who create content on the internet
represents approximately 1% (or less) of the people actually
viewing that content [54], and Preece and Shneiderman's [55]
“Reader-to-Leader Framework” shows different levels of
participation in terms of reading, contributing, collaborating
and leading, with decreasing numbers of people moving
through the stages, beginning with a majority of “all users”,
then moving from “reader”, to “contributor”, “collaborator” to
“leader” (p.16). In a similar vein, Kim [56] proposes that in
online participation, the users are (in decreasing numbers):
lurkers: those who don’t post; novices: were once lurkers, and
are now members who need to learn about the community;
regulars: were once novices, but are now established in the
community and are comfortable participating; leaders: the
volunteers and members that keep the community running and
eventually become elders; elders: those who regularly reply to
posts in an online community. So who is the “majority”, or
rather, who are the “lurkers”? They are not online trolls, not
spammers, and they do contribute.
IV. KNOW YOUR LURKERS
Lurking has a negative connotation: someone who hangs
around, is sinister, wants something for nothing [57], and
threatens the online group and its activities [58]. Definitions
often focus on what lurkers are not: not public, not visible and
not active, and these definitions neither adequately describe
lurking nor explain why it is important and valuable to online
participation. Lurkers may not be heard or seen, but they
represent the largest group of online users, and ignoring,
dismissing, misunderstanding lurkers distorts how we
understand online participation. Whatever the reasons for not
participating visibly, lurkers should not all be labelled as
“selfish free-riders” [59], and they should neither be
understood as non-users [60] nor do they represent the
unconnected, those “out of the loop, socially and otherwise”
[61, p. 101].
Lurking is a social behavior or perception towards others
and oneself (“Oh, I'm just lurking.” [62]), and a form of
interaction, with many different consequences and not all of
them known yet [63]. People lurk because that is what they
enjoy doing, because they have nothing to say or because they
are learning, reading, listening, forwarding information,
hyperlinking [64], collaborating or engaging with the digital
environment in some other way [65], [66]. Like other online
behaviors it subsumes several online behaviors and involves a
complex set of motives, rationales and activities [67], [68]. The
work by Takahashi and his colleagues [69]–[71] has been
pivotal in showing that online lurkers are active users, have
different and valuable roles, and as such, are useful participants
in a network by contributing to the community’s social capital.
Based on the assumption that lurkers can have a strong and
wide influence outside the online community, Takahashi et al.
propose a method of classifying lurkers based on their actions
within and outside a community that may or may not be
visible, as well as the extent to which the online community
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affects their thoughts and tasks. For Takahashi et al., lurkers
can have one of the following roles:
• The ‘active lurker as propagator’, who propagates
information or knowledge gained from an online
community to others outside it;
• The ‘active lurker as practitioner’ who uses such
information or knowledge in their own or organizational
activities.
• The ‘active lurker candidate’ where the online
community affects the lurker’s thought;
• The ‘persistent lurker’ where the online community
does not affect the lurker’s thought.
Lurkers not only use the information or knowledge gained
from a network for their own personal or work-related
activities, but can act as indirect contributors, propagating
topics to others who are not members of the community, thus
having a strong and wide influence that goes beyond the
perimeters of an online community, community of practice,
initiative, network or other online initiative.
V. LURKING AS A VALUABLE BEHAVIOUR
Takahashi’s research shows that lurkers can have an
“active” role, and, as indirect contributors, have effects outside
and beyond the reach of the online community or initiative in
which they are a participant. The research by Takahashi shows
that not the wide dissemination and use of information
technologies, but rather, a clearer understanding of social
capital will enable an online community to occupy a more
important position as a resource. Lurkers are indirect
contributors and make content available beyond the members
of a mailing list, community or social network, and are
essential for the transfer of knowledge between online groups
and social spaces that would otherwise be separated from each
other. As lurkers they cross boundaries, transfer knowledge
from one context too another, engage in identifying context-
specific knowledge needs and opportunities, promoting new
ideas, facilitating knowledge and content uptake, translating,
recombining and adapting knowledge, making sure it fits the
new context [72], making them “boundary spanners” or
“knowledge brokers”.
Whilst public posting represents one way of
communicating or one way an online community or platform
may benefit, it is not the only way – online participation has
many meanings and manifestations [73]. Participation needs
activities such as creating and posting content, but also
activities such as consuming and forwarding content e.g.
reading the material that others provide or post. They act as
connectors, and Stegbauer and Rausch [74, p. 271] note that
lurkers have a function “...connecting otherwise isolated social
spaces. They possibly contribute to the passing (…) of
contents…”. Others have also picked up on this understanding:
Gossieaux [75, p. unknown] sees them as the “hidden asset” –
active participants who forward content and information from
one community to others using a variety of different channels
(e.g. telephone, in conversation, by email) - or, in former
Yahoo! Executive Sanders' [76] terms, they are “Love cats”,
people who share knowledge freely and with good intent,
serving others, facilitating relationship building and adding to
group learning. Lurkers extend the online group, use the
information in other online groups or offline settings, lead to
connections with other networks, bring new contacts and
members, provide key activities, resources and information,
serve as an audience or are potential future users, customers
and consumers.
Online lurking is not only normal or positive, but an active,
participative online behavior, one that many people enjoy
engaging in. Lurkers not only derive value from their activities
- lurkers would not engage in lurking if they did not gain some
value from it - but they can also provide value for others. In
many contexts (or in the future), lurkers provide key revenue
sources, vital information [77], and, as a behavior common to
many information or collaborative environments, it is
necessary to understand how lurking can be beneficial and
valuable to others. Their activities may even be a necessity for
enabling communication, by paying attention as listeners or
audience, or being the justification and target for online
activities [78]. Lurkers are often listeners, an important role,
made clear by the statement “if everyone is talking, is anybody
listening?” [79, p. 2]. Listening (reading the posts) and acting
as an audience represent a legitimate form of participation and
contribute to the online world. According to Crawford [78]
“listening” is a useful metaphor for engagement and paying
attention online, and, as readers and listeners, lurkers contribute
a mode of receptiveness that encourages others to make public
contributions. In many contexts lurkers serve as listeners, as
conventional mass media audience, making them the
justification and target for certain online activities e.g.
commerce and advertising [66].
Lurkers motivate others to participate in more active ways,
either by providing information that helps complete a task, by
reading or being the indicator of the value and reliability of a
text – they are an “asset rather than a hindrance” [80, p. 128].
Wallace [81] states that even without contribution, lurkers
provide value by encouraging their peers to join, understanding
and discussing the issues, and pushing others to deliver content
that may increase engagement and participation. Muller [82, p.
not known] describes lurkers as “social readers”, participants
engaged in “social reading”, where reading is not a solitary,
unconnected, unproductive action, but understood an activity
everybody does, a social activity that occurs in a social context,
involves other people, and contributes to the social worlds of
readers, authors and organizations. Muller suggests that
everybody is a lurker, as we all read before engaging in another
activity such as creating or posting content. Lurkers’ behaviors
can also be used as a metric of online social influence: the
“Return on Contribution” (ROC) is based on the number of
people who read, view or consume a resource, divided by the
number of people who produced the resource [83]. Many
online participants spend many hours lurking, know the topics
of the conversation and key players well [66]. Work by
Metzger et al [84] shows that lurking is an important aspect in
the use of social networks, and that lurkers gain personal and
social benefits by visiting other members’ profiles and reading
others’ personal information. Lurking can be a positive and
helpful, by side-posting or contacting individuals directly
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instead, are still engaging in pro-social and thoughtful altruistic
behavior [85]. Lurking may be desirable for very busy groups:
if all members participate visibly, it could cause repetition of
queries and result in an overload of posting. In busy
communities, participants may not want to add to a cluttered
and confusing interface – so their intention not to post visibly is
altruistic [86] and helps avoid chaos and information overload.
VI. ONLINE LURKERS’ CONTRIBUTION TO E-PARTICIPATION
Government and public administration need to achieve
legislative goals in an effective and efficient manner, and there
are several social mechanisms so that valuable public goods for
the public can be provided. Bozeman [87] suggests that public
value needs to be considered independently from production
processes, as value and public value are more psychological
and sociological concepts. In policy cycles that encourage
participation and collaboration, governments and public
administrations encourage citizens to participate. Participation
in the online environment is based on values such as inclusion,
openness, informality and equality based on horizontal
communication, where all participants have equal rights in the
creation and submission of content, the use and aggregation of
information. Sandoval-Almazan and Gil-Garcia [29] thus
suggest that governments use ICT and applications to that not
only facilitate and foster information-intensive initiatives,
knowledge society but also support values such as
participation, collaboration and transparency. E-participation
too is also seen as relying on values found in online
environments, but also as a means to create public value. Open
collaboration and participation helps governments be more
transparent, to empower citizens and bring new ideas to the
community and society [88]. These are values that help reach
greater user diversity and network connections, access more
knowledge and achieve political accountability, transparency,
better performance, enhanced productivity and higher quality
in public administration. They also contribute to the aims of e-
participation and help achieve innovation in public
administration, understood as (1) outcomes, in individual and
societal terms in terms of increased health, learning, job
creation, safety, sustainable environment, (2) meaningful,
attractive and useful services for the users, (3) productivity,
such as enhancing the internal efficiency of public
organizations, and (4), strengthening democratic citizen
engagement and participation so as to ensure accountability,
transparency and equality in society [6].
Given the premise “that everyone is likely to lurk at least
some of the time and frequently most of the time”[63, p. 112] it
is clear that evaluating to what extent e-participation is
achieving its aims and public value cannot be achieved only by
counting the number of visible outcomes such as postings or
“likes”. A lot of online and technological research has focused
on ensuring that users “have a voice” [78, p. 1], that is, the
extent to which the technologies are used so that individuals
can express themselves freely in cyberspace. Crawford [78]
believes that too much emphasis has been placed on ensuring
that individuals express themselves freely when they are online
and that guaranteeing this freedom of expression relies on
visible posting only, whilst listening (reading posts) is seen as
less valuable. Online participation is thus seen as a dichotomy
between those who participate and those who don’t (and those
who don’t are assumed to free-ride), a view that is too
simplistic [80]. There is an increasing expectation that
everybody should be using online tools, but even high levels of
connectivity, frequent usage, the availability of and access to
information does not mean that participants will necessarily be
online more, be more social or more knowledgeable,
understand what they are expected to do, produce and post
more content. Nonetheless, the focus on interaction and
building relationships makes clear that public participation is a
social activity that makes citizens contributors to democratic
processes and public services [4], shared decision-making and
increased civic intelligence [21], [22]. Several researchers
show that understanding to what extent the aims of e-
participation have been achieved requires an evaluation that
focuses on all participants and stakeholders, all the media
channels used, communication and relationship patterns, the
information and resource flows and cross-boundary
information sharing [29], [89], [90]. Sandoval-Almazan and
Gil-Garcia [29] suggest that the evaluation of e-participation
should not rely on visible postings, but also consider (1) the
display of information that provides “valuable data and
information to citizens” (p. 74), (2) the provision of online
services and tools for interaction with citizens so that they can
discuss and share ideas and solutions, (3) the provision of
multiple channels for participation that expand the
opportunities for citizens to exchange data and knowledge, add
value and information quality to services, and of value for both
citizens and organizations, and finally, (4) the provision of
opportunities for collaboration based on a relationship that
produces trust. The government is to be viewed as a network
that allows collaboration, decision-making procedures, and is
reflected by flows of information and the exchange of data.
The new types of digital sharing tools encourage information
production, contributions and interactions among all
stakeholders, so the evaluation must look at the social actors
and the way they interact, create content, and share knowledge
[91]. An evaluation of public participation and innovation
needs to consider the aims of e-participation, but also focus on
how these are being achieved through the interaction and
relationships, knowledge-sharing needs and informational
benefits gained from access to other external sources and
informal network contacts [92] that many lurking participants
may be engaged in. Lurkers are often part of an online network
and engaged in relationships within and beyond its boundaries,
so act as connections between actors in other online and offline
environments and so contribute information, social support,
advice or intangibles such as money, goods, or services.
Rafaeli, Ravid, and Soroka [89] study online communities on
the assumption that reading and posting in a forum creates a
social network where all participants, both the “active” and the
“passive” (lurkers), acquire and contribute to social capital by
getting and providing access to valuable information, learning
the social norms of the relevant virtual community and getting
to know the participants. By engaging in different ways
(reading or posting or both) all participants help create a social
network and all have access to valuable information, learn
social norms of the relevant virtual community and get to know
the participants. Including lurkers’ activities rather than only
looking at the active or direct connections between people
90
allows to depict online participation more fully. Their research
shows that there are different levels of participation, and that
these go beyond posting comments, and that the evaluation of
online participation needs to capture those activities,
connections and relationships. Lurkers as weak ties [93] or
bridging ties [49] are important as they provide access to new
and different knowledge, support interactions, the exchange of
information and advice, and other social processes both
between people and across boundaries, helping to build a
network with outcomes greater than the sum of the pairwise
connections and other exchanges [94]. Dichotomies and
simplifications fail to capture the multiplexity of personal roles,
relations and means of communication that form our social
environment. Online and offline interaction are synergistic and
by including the role of lurkers in the evaluation of online
participation, it is possible to gain a broader view of how
people communicate in organizations or other political,
administrative structures, and to analyze and identify
information flows within and between online environments. It
can show the different and plural roles, communities or
networks a person has, that some are more visible than others,
and that each person is a unique intersection of
“multimemberships” [95, p. 125]. Each additional membership,
role and activity can have further and extensive effects on other
participants, the network and the particular context. Both
online interaction and lurking support knowledge building and
the development of shared understanding among participants,
as well as connect subgroups and help search and contribute
new resources, information and opportunities and ideas, all
important aspects for innovation in public administrations.
Lurkers contribute added value, sometimes referred to as social
capital, it represents the social resource embedded in and
constituted by social network ties [96] but can also describe the
extent to which the aims of e-participation have been achieved
beyond the number of visible posts.
VII. CONCLUSION
“Web 2.0 is interoperable, user-centered, promotes social
connectedness, media and information sharing, user-created
content, collaboration among individuals and organizations”
[97, p. 3], and online activities such as peering, sharing,
socializing, collaborating, are beneficial to others and
contribute to finding answers to problems. Internet
participation and collaboration will continue to grow with
increased access to computing power, transparency, and
democratization of data, and so will lurking. Whilst technology
for sharing is freely available (and abundant), information itself
is social and the extent of sharing is socially constructed [98].
Internet users and their engagement varies at different levels
and degrees of intensity and this may be due to a number of
factors, including political interests, educational level and
technological skills [43]. Differences in levels and types of
participation are to be expected, and the impact of online
lurking will continue to be misunderstood if defined as a form
of inaction, non-visibility or undesirable behavior. Whilst
governments must ensure stability and the respect of
democratic and participative values, they also need to respond
to developments and changes that lead to innovating
(improving) and delivering public value, policies and services
[28], [91]. But the focus of collaborative or participative value
production should not be collaboration by all means but
decisions that include all stakeholders, however they
participate and contribute. Online technologies may encourage
collaboration and contact, building and cultivating social
networks, but lurkers also contribute, provide and disseminate
the knowledge as well as be the bridges, links and connections
necessary for the implementation and building of alliances and
professional practices that are valuable for the public.
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