Triggered by recent flood catastrophes and increasing concerns about climate change, scientists as well as policy-makers increasingly call for making long-term water policies to enable a transformation towards flood resilience. A key question is how to make these long-term policies adaptive so that they …

As web technology and (big) data continue to transform how we organize ourselves, scholarly research increasingly zooms in on the socio-material conditions of citizen participation and public engagement, the objects and devices that organize publics. Where social issues may often be the driver of such …

This study aims at examining the ways people communicate about energy transition, by analyzing the discourse of different stakeholders in a case of a local initiative for renewable energy. When moving from traditional to renewable energy, social acceptance of new technologies is of central importance, …

Over the last few years, the term “smart cities” has gained traction in academic, industry, and policy debates about the deployment of new media technologies in urban settings. It is mostly used to describe and market technologies that make city infrastructures more efficient, and personalize the experience …

The nation-state had a long history of success, but today it is failing its citizens on a global scale. Over the last hundred years, nation-states focussed on maximizing internal unity and jurisdictional sovereignty. Benjamin R. Barber’s ‘If Mayors Ruled The World’ is the central source of this thesis …

Leading up to the European parliamentary elections in June 2009, the question to which extent political parties are able to engage citizens through strategic marketing efforts regains significance in the public discourse. The paper analyzes both the origins and trends of political marketing to distill …