  With the ubiquity of Internet technologies and growing demands for
transparency and open data policies, the role of social networking and online
deliberation tools for public engagement in decision-making has increased
substantially in the last decades. In this paper, we present the analysis of
how social media are used by different public bodies to enhance public
participation in deliberative democracy. We collected and reviewed published
information on the subject and carried out a field base assessment, involving
structured interviews with different government representatives and urban
policymakers. In order to compare collected data, we used a framework for
systematic analysis and comparison of e-participation platforms called the
participatory cube. The results we got were the following. Participatory
decision-making on matters of public concern justly consumes time and
resources, therefore online tools should be applied with consideration of scale
and efficiency, i.e. on burning issues for a majority of citizens or
small-scale local platforms, and in combination with meetings in real time and
space. The budget and workforce allocated to managing online engagement tools
should be proportionate to other political and administrative efforts to bring
to execution proposed ideas and act on collected feedback in order to satisfy
the needs expressed by the communities and not undermine their beliefs about
their power to influence decisions.
