Place branding has been used to influence ideas concerning communities and districts, especially in regeneration programmes. This article approaches branding as a new governance strategy for managing perceptions. Considering the popular criticism that branding is a form of spin that prevents the public from gaining a proper understanding of their government’s policies, this article focuses on the democratic legitimacy of branding in urban governance. The branding of two urban communities in the Netherlands is examined empirically in terms of input legitimacy, throughput legitimacy and output legitimacy. The research shows how the democratic legitimacy of branding varies in the two cases. In one case, branding largely excluded citizens, whereas in the other case there was limited citizen participation. The article indicates that, although branding can potentially be a participatory process in which the feelings and emotions of citizens are included, this potential is not always fully realised in practice.

Social media monitoring, which promises several advantages such as early warning and reputation management, is gradually becoming common practice in public organizations in the Netherlands. From a citizen's point of view, it can contribute to the responsiveness of public policies. However, social media monitoring also poses questions in terms of transparency and privacy. This paper investigates four cases of social media monitoring by Dutch public organizations. Policy departments are more strongly orientated towards monitoring, whereas organizations involved in policy implementation seem to be more inclined to progress to webcare. The paper argues for more transparency on social media monitoring.

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A common approach towards the role of the moderator in Internet discussions is to see him as a filter. In this article I want to show that the moderator in government-initiated Internet discussions about public issues can be seen as a democratic intermediary, and that this role has the potential to enhance the quality of those discussions as forms of deliberative democracy. I develop a conceptual model of the management of Internet discussions. Five cases of Dutch Internet discussions about public issues are analyzed. The filter function of moderation appears to be of minor importance. Moderators do a lot more. They manage discussions. Particularly, they contribute to the interactivity and openness of discussions and to the accessibility of public administration and institutional politics. In most of the cases described, there had been independent, 'third party' moderation. As governments gain more experience with the Internet, moderation may shift to governmental agencies. In this perspective, it is important to stress the transparency and to care for the negotiableness of moderation. 1. Introduction Case 1-In an Internet debate about sustainable economic growth, organized in 1999 by one of the provincial governments in the Netherlands, two representatives of political parties (one Christian Democrat, and one Liberal Democrat) became involved in a discussion about policy priorities. At a certain stage of the discussion, one of the politicians proposed to carry on the discussion 'in the assembly rooms of representative democracy' and to let others utilize 'the bytes of this new medium'. At that point the moderator intervened. He underlined the public role of representatives and urged them to participate in the debate, to exchange and defend their points of view, as well as to probe the points of view of citizens. The moderator continually tried to involve the politicians in the debate, for example by sending them e-mails when he considered them keeping silent for too long a time. Case 2-In an Internet discussion about mobility, organized in 1996/97 by the Ministry of Transport, each month the moderator invited a politician to become the 'Politician of the Month'. The moderator selected a small number of contributions of participants and forwarded them to the politician to react. This enhanced the attractiveness of the site and stimulated the discussion. It also provoked a discussion about the way the politicians in general perform this job, in particular about their inclination to take non-committal positions. What we see in these cases is the emergence of the moderator as a new democratic intermediary between citizens and government, next to already existing ones. Democratic regimes cannot function properly without intermediaries. Several intermediary roles can be discerned in the information and communication relationships between citizens and government. In representative *The author wishes to thank Ignace Snellen for his comments on earlier versions of this article. A first draft was presented at the CIPA'99 ...

New social network technology provides individuals and small groups with powerful resources for rapid political mobilization. Such mobilization can create strategic surprises for policy‐makers. Two cases of Web 2.0 driven micro‐mobilization processes and one case of Web 1.0 driven micro‐mobilization process are considered. In these cases policy‐makers were taken by surprise because their repertoires of action were focused primarily on official arrangements of consultation and on the news coverage by traditional media. As a result, micro‐mobilization may confront traditional intermediary organizations and policy‐makers with rather ‘uncontrolled’ demands for change. These demands may act as ‘focusing events’ that challenge the legitimacy of public organizations, policy programmes and existing consultation and negotiation patterns. Governments need to respond to these focusing events and the paper ends by discussing some coping strategies governments may need to deploy.