Are E-Petitions Operative for Change? On the Effectiveness and the Transformative Potential of E-Petitioning

During the last decade, with the progress of new information and communication technologies, electronic petitioning systems have emerged as a productive way for individuals to communicate with the authorities or policy makers about diverse issues. Although, they are designed to enable citizens to influence decision?making in the policy making process, there is an ongoing discussion on their effectiveness: one side of this discussion regards e-petitions as a new form of activism that enables greater political participation, and hence fortifies democracy. According to this view, e-petition campaigns can be an operative tool to help citizens to put issues on the political agenda, they are capable of producing a desired result, and thus they can cause a change over and transform political decisions. On the other side of this discussion, there is an opposite view that considers the transformative potential of an online petition as very moderate. Within this study, this transformative potential, the effectiveness of e-petitions, is discussed and analysed. With this aim, the paper uses the case studies from change.org.tr to determine the extent to which e-petitioning worked when ending a campaign successfully.