On the (In)effectiveness of the Share/Tweet Button: Idea Management for Civic Participation

The authors study the practice of promoting idea campaigns in social networks via the well-known Share/Tweet button. They analyze data about 53 civic participation initiatives collected from IdeaScale, one of the leading online idea management platforms today, and unveil a considerable misconception about the effectiveness of the practice. The article highlights open challenges and suggests a set of alternative techniques to leverage on the ideation capacity of social networks.