Notice of RetractionNetwork-politics-participation of the information age: Backgrounds, values and impacts

Notice of Retraction

After careful and considered review of the content of this paper by a duly constituted expert committee, this paper has been found to be in violation of IEEE´s Publication Principles.

We hereby retract the content of this paper. Reasonable effort should be made to remove all past references to this paper.

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Citizen political participation will inevitably show a lot of revolutionary features of digit and network. The rise of net-participation is closely related to the rapid development of social economy and network technology. The political backgrounds of net-participation are mainly composed of the crisis of representative democracy and the trend of direct democracy. Moreover, the new ideas of service-oriented government based on civil society will further promote the development of net-participation. There are a range of new characteristics in net-participation, such as reducing the costs of political participation, broadening its channels, and making direct democracy possible. Net-participation has a positive impact on the democratic development. It may reduce the sense of people´s political apathy and increase their enthusiasm for political participation, cultivate citizens´ democratic consciousness and political responsibility, and network supervision might become the most extensive and representative one. The net-participation also contributes to the reforms of governments. Power structure is developing from centralized to decentralized level. Decision-making structures are developing from vertically to interactively. Network weakens the government´s management functions and strengthens communications and contacts between the government and the public, and highlights the government´s service functions.