Social Media and Counter-Democracy: The Contingences of Participation.-  E-Consultations: A Review of Current Practice and a Proposal for Opening Up the Process.- Choosing the Right Medium for Municipal eParticipation Based on Stakeholder Expectations.- A Communication Genre Perspective on e-Petitioning: The Case of the Citizens’ Initiative -- Citizens’ Evaluation of an Online Argument Visualisation Platform for eParticipation -- PolicyCommons — Visualizing Arguments in Policy Consultation -- Structuring Japanese Regional Information Gathered from the Web as Linked Open Data for Use in Concern Assessment -- Using Online Carbon Calculators for Participation in Local Climate Initiatives.- Reference Process Model for Participatory Budgeting in Germany.- Getting Teenagers to Participate: A Survey of the Youth Council of the City of Lausanne.- Model Based Critique of Policy Proposals.- Online Communities Support Policy-Making: The Need for Data Analysis.- Exploiting eParticipation Using an Ontological Approach.- Public Policy Formulation through Non Moderated Crowdsourcing in Social Media. E-Consultations: A Review of Current Practice and a Proposal for Opening Up the Process.- Choosing the Right Medium for Municipal eParticipation Based on Stakeholder Expectations.- A Communication Genre Perspective on e-Petitioning: The Case of the Citizens’ Initiative -- Citizens’ Evaluation of an Online Argument Visualisation Platform for eParticipation -- PolicyCommons — Visualizing Arguments in Policy Consultation -- Structuring Japanese Regional Information Gathered from the Web as Linked Open Data for Use in Concern Assessment -- Using Online Carbon Calculators for Participation in Local Climate Initiatives.- Reference Process Model for Participatory Budgeting in Germany.- Getting Teenagers to Participate: A Survey of the Youth Council of the City of Lausanne.- Model Based Critique of Policy Proposals.- Online Communities Support Policy-Making: The Need for Data Analysis.- Exploiting eParticipation Using an Ontological Approach.- Public Policy Formulation through Non Moderated Crowdsourcing in Social Media.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Fourth IFIP WG 8.5 International Conference, ePart 2012, held in Kristiansand, Norway, in September 2012. The 14 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. This volume includes complete research work organised in five groups as follows: • Keynote Speech • Reviews • Policy Consultations • Case Studies • Techniques and Analysis.