Research themes in the use of E-participation within E-government: A Citation-based Content Analysis

This paper presents the current research themes and trends in the use of E-participation within e-government. The main objective of this research study is to review and conduct a detailed content analysis of the top 100 articles and identify the latest research themes and trends in the field of e-participation within e-government and the objective is outlined on a qualitative research question. The selection of the top 100 most influential papers is based on the number of citations per year. The content analysis includes the paper categorization; authors’ keywords and growth; country of analysis; theme of studies; method of analysis; and technology type. The content analysis of the period 2003-2019 revealed that most of the studies (31%) used case studies, while 11% of the studies utilized a regression analysis technique to evaluate their datasets. In terms of technology, our analysis showed that the Internet and web-based tools are the most frequently used platforms for conducting e-participation. The contribution of this study is to provide a worm’s eye view of current research in the field of e-participation within e-government. This study will be beneficial for current and future researchers and practitioners, particularly those requiring a reliable knowledge base that can help them to do further research in the field of e-participation within e-government.