A paper by Stephen Coleman on The Network-Empowered Citizen:

The main conclusion of this research is that new sources of networked knowledgesharing have emerged and are producing a new kind of empowered citizen. Networkempowered citizens are not like liberal-individualists, insofar as they recognise the value of pooling knowledge, but neither are they like members of virtual communities, because their principal commitment is to pursuing offline interests and values. Networkempowered citizens go online to augment their store of bridging social capital, enabling them to make heterogeneous connections and acquire knowledge conveniently. Civic networks should be respected and promoted as sources of empowered citizenship. Network-empowered citizenship weakens the sustainability of vertical structures of government and calls for new forms of co-governance in which the shared common knowledge of citizens feeds directly into the making of more relevant policies and more accountable, legitimate and effective decisions.