Arafat Kabir, a master’s student majoring in politics and culture, and Michaelene Cox, M.A. ’11, an associate professor in the Department of Politics and Government, teamed up to better understand research trends in e-government. Kabir presented their work at the 2015 Illinois State University Research Symposium held in the spring at the Bone Student Center.
Cox began researching e-government three years ago and regularly attends the European Conference on e-Government. Kabir, who is Cox’s graduate assistant, decided to work on a portion of Cox’s e-government research related to public trust and e-democracy.
“I encouraged him to do this not just for the research experience, but for the presentation experience, to give him practice with communication skills, and to take responsibility for a product that the public is going to see,” Cox said.
Kabir analyzed almost 600 articles published in the past 10 years on e-governments in Europe and the United States. Through looking at research trends, Kabir found more American articles than European articles on public trust and e-democracy.
“While it may be speculative to conclude that scholars based in the U.S. are, by far, more interested in public trust and e-democracy than Europeans, the difference in number may simply reflect editorial decisions as what to publish,” said Kabir. “In the end, significant works are being done in this field both in the U.S. and Europe.”
