Technology Transforms Politics:Internet + Government Services and the Transformation of the Grassroots Power Structure

Since the rise of the Internet in China,China’s local governments have actively used Internet technology to facilitate public administration and public services.What impact,then,have different types of social media had on local governance?This paper,based on years of investigation of J Town and L Sub-district in Shanghai(2012-2018),finds that Internet technology has profoundly transformed the grassroots power structure.Before the rise of the Internet,the grassroots power structure included local government,activists and the masses;in the age of Weibo and home owners forums,grassroots opinion leaders rose,becoming an impressive social force that local government could not afford to ignore;in the age of WeChat,however,the influence of grassroots opinion leaders declined,as local government can interact directly with the masses through WeChat public accounts and WeChat group chats,with the network technology becoming a tool for micromanagement.These three stages correspond to three types of government characterized by limited mobilization,consultation,and user-friendliness,respectively.

Technological Readiness as Mediator to Adoption of E-Governemnt Services in Zanzibar SMEs

The aim of the paper is to explore e-government services technological readiness as a mediating factor impacting the development of Zanzibar SMEs. The ultimate objective is to provide actionable insights and recommendations that could inform future strategies and policies to enhance Zanzibar SMEs on the successful implementation and acceptance of e-government services in Zanzibar. The study involves SMEs which are Small and Medium Industries Development Agency (SMIDA), Zanzibar Association of Tourism Investors (ZATI) and Zanzibar National Chambers of Commerce (ZNCC). Quantitative research design holds significant merit for this study, whereby primary data was in this study ensures that all variables are accurately and comprehensively captured. The study involved 384 respondents. Survey questionnaire used to collect the required information. Generally, the results displayed that, while Technological Readiness does not exhibit a mediating effect between either Human Resource Capital or Financial Source Capital and E-government Services Adoption, it does play a significant mediating role in the relationships of both Government Policies and Information Communication Technology with E-government Services Adoption. This highlights the importance of considering intermediary factors like Technological Readiness when understanding the influences on E-government service adoption to Zanzibar SMEs.

Arabic Sentiment Analysis of Users’ Opinions of Governmental Mobile Applications

Different types of pandemics that have appeared from time to time have changed many aspects of daily life.Some governments encourage their citizens to use certain applications to help control the spread of disease and to deliver other services during lockdown.The Saudi government has launched several mobile apps to control the pandemic and have made these apps available through Google Play and the app store.A huge number of reviews are written daily by users to express their opinions,which include significant information to improve these applications.The manual processing and extracting of information from users’reviews is an extremely difficult and time-consuming task.Therefore,the use of intelligent methods is necessary to analyse users’reviews and extract issues that can help in improving these apps.This research aims to support the efforts made by the Saudi government for its citizens and residents by analysing the opinions of people in Saudi Arabia that can be found as reviews on Google Play and the app store using sentiment analysis and machine learning methods.To the best of our knowledge,this is the first study to explore users’opinions about governmental apps in Saudi Arabia.The findings of this analysis will help government officers make the right decisions to improve the quality of the provided services and help application developers improve these applications by fixing potential issues that cannot be identified during application testing phases.A new dataset used for this research includes 8000 user reviews gathered from social media,Google Play and the app store.Different methods are applied to the dataset,and the results show that the k nearest neighbourhood(KNN)method generates the highest accuracy compared to other implemented methods.

A survey of public needs for government information service in libraries

Purpose:This paper describes a comprehensive user survey carried out in China to investigate public needs for government information service in libraries.It is expected to provide insights into the ways to help public libraries meet the user needs.Design/methodology/approach:The paper is founded on a survey among library users,librarians and non-library users.Paper questionnaires were distributed in the National Library of China and 32 provincial public libraries in China and electronic questionnaires were sent to non-library users.A total of 909 valid questionnaires were collected.Findings:A lot of attention is paid to policies,laws and regulations relating to common people’s work and lives such as science,technology,education,culture,finance,market supervision,health care,sports,urban construction and environment protection.A wide variety of government information resources is needed and information delivered to users shall be accurate and timely.Internet has become the main means of accessing government information and mobile phones the preferred Web access channel,while printed materials are considered important information sources.Users need assistance and training in the use of library information resources and services.Research limitations:The sample was limited to respondents from provincial-level public libraries,but city and county-level library users were not included.Practical implications:The survey results are beneficial for the Chinese public libraries to design service programs and improve their services.Originality/value:The paper is one of the comprehensive surveys on public needs for government information service in the Chinese libraries and some of die findings will be of wider interest for other libraries.

Current status and future development of Chinese Government Public Information Online

Since its launch last year, the Chinese Government Public Information Online(CGPIO) platform's basic construction has developed rapidly. This paper describes the technology and service status of the platform, analyzes its problems, and details the future development of the alliance platform in the future.

Public Service Media Journalism and Democracy in the Digital Age

In the digital age, when we witness the rapid proliferation of platforms and services, European societies continue debating the role and the future of public service media （PSM）. In the new digital environment, public service broadcasting/media, which for a number of social and cultural reasons have been at the core of the European media system, faces the capital question--What democracy do public operators strive for and how can they accomplish it？ PSM has to be at the vanguard of the complex process of media transformation in the information society and particularly of the formation of novel journalistic culture which besides the values of ethical and innovative content should also serve the principles of good and efficient governance.

Study of Construction of Personalized Service Oriented Government Virtual Information Service Center

In this paper, we proposed the idea of personalized information service for enterprises and customers through government visual information service center (GVISC). It discusses an extensible, reusable, reconstructive and integrated framework of GVISC with new techniques, such as XML, agent, data mining and information portal. They include the design and analysis of the logical structure, the design of the data layer, and the description of the function application. We show an example of personalized information service for forest fire prevention in the government virtual information service center.