Policy innovation in the digital era

Abstract

Although novel policies will be especially important for addressing grand societal challenges, how the digital transition influences the ability of governments to adopt new policies remains unclear. In this study, the relationship between digitization and policy innovation is explored in order to understand how the two might be related. Specifically, media narratives are studied in the case of the ongoing rollout of smart metering in India to assess whether and how this instance of digital governance has been discussed in the news. To do so, 370 articles in the largest English language daily newspaper in India have been analyzed using topic modelling and sentiment analysis. Findings highlight the polysemic nature of smart metering and its ability to support highly (re-)configurable and targeted policy designs, as well as some resistance to this policy innovation thus far. Implications of the findings are discussed for theory and research on digital governance and policy innovation.