Page 259 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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Political Communication and Electronic Democracy

political representatives are using the Internet to communicate in di-
rect and interactive ways with their constituents, because Web sites are
technologically mature and one of the most popular applications on the
Internet.

PERSONAL WEB SITES IN THE U.S. HOUSE, THE SWEDISH
RIKSDAG, AND THE GERMAN BUNDESTAG: DOES THE
INTERNET MATTER TO DEMOCRACY?
The Parliaments of Sweden, Germany, and the United States introduced
4
main parliamentary Web sites in 1995–6. ButbyApril 2000 there were
still major differences among these cases regarding the degree to which
individual representatives were using the World Wide Web to communi-
cate with constituents in direct ways. This finding is based upon a count
of hypertext links that direct users from the main parliamentary Web
site to personal Web sites in direct or indirect ways. A personal Web site
is defined here as a piece of digitalized information that is published by
an individual member of parliament rather than a parliamentary bu-
reaucracy or party, which provides personalized information beyond a
uniform handbook format, and which can be retrieved using the World
5
Wide Web. Figure 10.2 demonstrates that these differences are in line
with the assumption that electronic democracy would be a secular de-
velopment in the American political context. While almost all members
of the U.S. House of Representatives were using personal Web sites by
April 2000, only a minority of members of parliament (MPs) did so in
the Riksdag and the Bundestag.
These personal Web sites raise questions regarding their political rel-
evance. After all, they could be nothing other than digital brochures,
which have little meaning as a means for direct political communication
between members of parliament and their constituents. For the purpose
of this analysis, the notion of relevance has been defined by the degree to
which personal Web sites utilize the new opportunities for communica-
tion provided by the technology. These new opportunities are defined by
the interactive capabilities of the Internet, its bandwidth, which allows

4 For the German Bundestag see F¨ uhles-Ubach/Neumann 1998 and Mambrey et al.
1999; for the U.S. Congress see Casey 1996; and Coleman et al. 1999 and Norris 2001,
ch.7,provide an overview on other parliaments.
5
All three main parliamentary Web sites along with all of the available personal Web
sites were downloaded and archived in April 2000 to secure a stable set of data.

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