The research covered the views on the information society from a European and the Austrian perspective and integrated these into the implications for democracy in the context of citizenship information.
A description and analysis of the basic trends with regards the information society at the European level on the basis of discourse analysis of various documents beginning around 1984, is followed by tracing the development of the discourse and of the policies on the subject. The study furthermore describes the development of the institutional mechanisms implemented to promote the information society and how these have been seeking partner organizations or intermediaries at the national level and draws some connections with developments in the USA and Japan.
The Austrian perspective traces these developments in a similar fashion. Documents on the subject as well as the institutional mechanisms implemented to promote it and their activities are analyzed and a distinction is drawn between activities directly tied to programmes or actions of the European Union and activities related more to the national environment as such. The degree to which the targets identified in the framework of the information society in Austria coincide with those of the European Union, and the extent to which Austria might have separate goals are assessed and also identifies information service providers on the subject of the European Union as such. Regulation is one of the issues discussed on both levels.
The report further more views citizenship information in the framework of the information society. On the basis of the material selected and analyzed, the extent to which the subject of citizenship information and its for democratic politics is addressed in the policies or discourse on the information society. It includes trends in this direction in various European countries, supplanted by an investigation of the situation in this connection in Austria. Examples are projects underway to establish or implement the empowerment of citizens to gain access to public information. Local community projects or the information campaign initiated with reference to the referendum on the European Union serve as an examples to assess the actual interest on the subject of the European Union and how the dissemination of the information was organized then. |
