research-article

Petition growth and success rates on the UK No. 10 Downing Street website

Authors:

Helen Margetts,

Taha YasseriAuthors Info & Claims

WebSci '13: Proceedings of the 5th Annual ACM Web Science Conference

Pages 132 - 138

https://doi.org/10.1145/2464464.2464518

Published: 02 May 2013 Publication History

Abstract

Now that so much of collective action takes place online, web-generated data can further understanding of the mechanics of Internet-based mobilisation. This trace data offers social science researchers the potential for new forms of analysis, using real-time transactional data based on entire populations, rather than sample-based surveys of what people think they did or might do. This paper uses a 'big data' approach to track the growth of over 8,000 petitions to the UK Government on the No. 10 Downing Street website for two years, analysing the rate of growth per day and testing the hypothesis that the distribution of daily change will be leptokurtic (rather than normal) as previous research on agenda setting would suggest. This hypothesis is confirmed, suggesting that Internet-based mobilisation is characterized by tipping points (or punctuated equilibria) and explaining some of the volatility in online collective action. We find also that most successful petitions grow quickly and that the number of signatures a petition receives on its first day is a significant factor in explaining the overall number of signatures a petition receives during its lifetime. These findings have implications for the strategies of those initiating petitions and the design of web sites with the aim of maximising citizen engagement with policy issues.

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Cited By

Yang ZFeng J(2023)Explainable multi-task convolutional neural network framework for electronic petition tag recommendationElectronic Commerce Research and Applications10.1016/j.elerap.2023.10126359:COnline publication date: 15-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.elerap.2023.101263
Lee C(2023)COVID Non-Conformity via the Korean National Petition: Citizens’ Responses to Pandemic Biopolitical Social ControlCritical Criminology10.1007/s10612-023-09706-831:2(327-342)Online publication date: 21-Jun-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-023-09706-8
Thapa KVermeulen WDeutz POlayide O(2022)Ultimate producer responsibility for e‐waste management–A proposal for just transition in the circular economy based on the case of used European electronic equipment exported to NigeriaBusiness Strategy & Development10.1002/bsd2.2226:1(33-52)Online publication date: 7-Sep-2022
https://doi.org/10.1002/bsd2.222
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Index Terms

Petition growth and success rates on the UK No. 10 Downing Street website
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Collaborative and social computing
    1. Collaborative and social computing theory, concepts and paradigms
      1. Computer supported cooperative work
  2. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Interaction paradigms
      1. Web-based interaction
2. Social and professional topics
  1. Computing / technology policy
  2. Professional topics
    1. Computing and business
      1. Computer supported cooperative work

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

WebSci '13: Proceedings of the 5th Annual ACM Web Science Conference

May 2013

481 pages

ISBN:9781450318891

DOI:10.1145/2464464

Conference Chairs:
Hugh Davis
University of Southampton
,
Harry Halpin
World Wide Web Consortium
,
Alex Pentland,
Program Chairs:
Mark Bernstein,
Lada Adamic,
Harith Alani,
Alexandre Monnin,
Richard Rogers

Copyright © 2013 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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SIGWEB: ACM Special Interest Group on Hypertext, Hypermedia, and Web

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 02 May 2013

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Economic and Social Research Council

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WebSci '13

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SIGWEB

WebSci '13: Web Science 2013

May 2 - 4, 2013

Paris, France

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Overall Acceptance Rate 245 of 933 submissions, 26%

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Cited By

Yang ZFeng J(2023)Explainable multi-task convolutional neural network framework for electronic petition tag recommendationElectronic Commerce Research and Applications10.1016/j.elerap.2023.10126359:COnline publication date: 15-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.elerap.2023.101263
Lee C(2023)COVID Non-Conformity via the Korean National Petition: Citizens’ Responses to Pandemic Biopolitical Social ControlCritical Criminology10.1007/s10612-023-09706-831:2(327-342)Online publication date: 21-Jun-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-023-09706-8
Thapa KVermeulen WDeutz POlayide O(2022)Ultimate producer responsibility for e‐waste management–A proposal for just transition in the circular economy based on the case of used European electronic equipment exported to NigeriaBusiness Strategy & Development10.1002/bsd2.2226:1(33-52)Online publication date: 7-Sep-2022
https://doi.org/10.1002/bsd2.222
Briassoulis H(2021)Becoming E-Petition: An Assemblage-Based Framework for Analysis and ResearchSage Open10.1177/2158244021100135411:1Online publication date: 16-Mar-2021
https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440211001354
Jungherr ARivero GGayo-Avello D(2020)Retooling Politics10.1017/9781108297820Online publication date: 17-Jun-2020
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108297820
Barats CDister AGambette PLeblanc JPeres-Leblanc M(2019)Ce que les données textuelles disent du pétitionnement en ligne : entre contraintes et appropriations du dispositifQuestions de communication10.4000/questionsdecommunication.2104236(123-146)Online publication date: 2019
https://doi.org/10.4000/questionsdecommunication.21042
Aichholzer GRose G(2019)Experience with Digital Tools in Different Types of e-ParticipationEuropean E-Democracy in Practice10.1007/978-3-030-27184-8_4(93-140)Online publication date: 7-Nov-2019
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27184-8_4
Asher MLeston‐Bandeira CSpaiser V(2019)Do Parliamentary Debates of e‐Petitions Enhance Public Engagement With Parliament? An Analysis of Twitter ConversationsPolicy & Internet10.1002/poi3.19411:2(149-171)Online publication date: 8-Jan-2019
https://doi.org/10.1002/poi3.194
Hale SJohn PMargetts HYasseri T(2018)How digital design shapes political participation: A natural experiment with social informationPLOS ONE10.1371/journal.pone.019606813:4(e0196068)Online publication date: 27-Apr-2018
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0196068
Porshnev A(2018)Success Factors of Electronic Petitions at Russian Public Initiative Project: The Role of Informativeness, Topic and Lexical InformationSocial Informatics10.1007/978-3-030-01159-8_23(243-250)Online publication date: 20-Sep-2018
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01159-8_23
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