The Use of Mobile Technology, Internet and Social Media - To Promote Integrity and Increase Compliance Through Citizen Activism To Control Corruption

Anti-corruption policies and programmes have long been seen as a cornerstone of democracy promotion and good governance in many countries. Along side of this has been the promotion of citizen participation as fundamental to good governance, transparency and democracy-building efforts. Corruption is commonly seen as a problem for both developed and developing countries, hence the move by many governments to take a more proactive role in the development of anti-corruption programmes. The paper is an empirical case study of a current, on-going project based in North Macedonia (undertaken by Transparency International) and is focused on examining the use of new technologies to detect corruption and collect data to be latter validated, on corruption levels and sectors in which these are occurring, within the country (e.g. promoting integrity and increasing compliance with current anti-corruption legislation and regulations). The detection of corruption utilises new technologies by civil society members to report experiences and/or allegations of corruption taking place on the ground. This detection and reporting provides potential data on levels of corruption, effectiveness/ineffectiveness of both legislation put in place and of the enforcement of such legislation in practice. Discussion will also take into account whether detection through the use of new technologies has had any visible/calculable changes at the procedural or legislative levels to combating corruption within North Macedonia. Can any changes that have occurred be attributed to the increased levels of direct civic participation via new technology and social media? Does such use of new technologies as in North Macedonia, provide observations that can be generalised for possible use in other countries as well?