Page 260 - Comparing Political Communication Theories, Cases, and Challenge

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Thomas Zittel

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Parliament Parl. Party Committees Members
Level of Parliament

U.S. House Bundestag Riksdag
Figure 10.2 The Universe of Parliamentary Web Sites (U.S. House,
Bundestag, Riksdag–April 2000)

the broadcasting of massive amounts of information, and its ability to
be used as a tool to poll constituents on policy issues in a timely and
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targeted manner. We performed a content analysis to test the degree
to which personal Web sites in the three parliaments under study were
taking advantage of these opportunities.
This analysis demonstrates that many MPs were using this new
medium in suboptimal ways if we take its technological capabilities as
apoint of reference. In each of the three cases analyzed, more than
93 percent of personal Web sites provide only the most basic interactive
applications such as e-mail or Web mail. These basic interactive applica-
tions are hardly any different from traditional means of one-to-one com-
municationssuchaslettersortelephones.Theymightdecreasethecostof
communication in marginal ways but they do not take advantage of new
opportunities for public interactive communication in various formats
such as many-to-many or many-to-few. Discussion fora, for example,

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The analysis was based upon a scheme that coded the characteristics of personal Web
sites in terms of interactivity, the political relevance of information and its use as an
instrument to poll citizens.

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