Online petitioning and politics: the development of Change.org in Australia

Online petitions are an important feature of contemporary political engagement in advanced democracies. In this paper we report on a unique data set covering a five year period and over 17,000 petitions documenting the development of the Change.org platform in Australia. Australia presents an interesting case as, until very recently, there was no national government hosted online petition site. Our analysis results in three findings that advance scholarship on online petitions. First, we find the majority of petitions are in fact targeted at government, and that their issue area is of a political nature. Second, we find that most signers of petitions sign a single petition they are not serial participants. Finally, we show that super users of the online petition system engage broadly as well as often. Together these findings demonstrate that online petition creation and signing even on commercial platforms is a distinct and important part of citizen engagement in politics. 

在先进的民主国家，在线申诉是当前政治参与的一个重要特征。本文谈论了一组独特的资料——为期5年的1700项申诉，以之见证澳大利亚change.org平台的发展。澳大利亚很有意思，直到最近才出现政府提供的在线申诉网站。本研究的发现有三。第一，多数申诉针对政府，话题都是政治性的。第二，大部分签署者签署一个申诉，也就是说他们不是系列参与者。第三，在线申诉的“超级用户”，其参与往往既广泛又频繁。综合这些发现，我们认为即便是商业平台上的在线申诉及签署都属于公民政治参与独特而重要的部分。