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Politics on the internet
Richard Parsons
The internet offers a fantastic variety of ways for engaging with people.
What we have witnessed this week with Webcameron and the subsequent spoofs has highlighted one way of treating politics online.
ePolitix.com, which is now in its sixth year, has seen a massive growth in MPs, Stakeholders and the electorate communicating with each other on key policy issues.
Engagement and communication through sites such as this one has shown that the internet can reach out and engage with new communities.
But it is all-too easy for those of us involved in online politics to assume that we can engage with the public in a way that politicians and political parties can't.
Those who've found fame as bloggers highlight the technology's opportunities for instantaneous debate and interaction; others see podcasts as a new means of making debate and opinion more widely available; while video podcasts could even see the broadcast media being by-passed.
This is all possible to an extent, but too often the debate about politics on the internet fails to go back to first principles and ask what it is that politicians want to achieve.
Instead, the latest fashion in communications technology is used as a symbol of modernity and of being 'in touch', especially with younger audiences.
But simply using the internet will not result in an instantly enthused electorate. The issue of apathy arises from much wider issues involving the credibility of politicians and the messages they seek to convey.
It should also be remembered that the internet is just one of a range of communications options for communicating with the public.
Careful choices need to be made about which messages work best in which medium, and which audience is the main target.
Taking a wider look at politics on the internet there are four distinct groups: the public sector, including the government, parliament, local councils and hundreds of other public sector bodies; individual politicians and their parties; traditional media organisations; and the online communities and bloggers.
The challenge is that the key decision-making is still carried out by government, parliament, politicians and parties.
But lively online political debate is increasingly taking place without including any of these.
Bloggers and communities of like-minded individuals are already, in many instances, setting their own agenda with little involvement by traditional political institutions.
Of course, without the involvement of these institutions and the people who influence them, it is hard to translate the range of opinions and knowledge that can be found on the internet either into effective policy or action to get something done.
So politicians and civil servants should be seeking to bridge the gaps that are emerging between online politics and the traditional ways of conducting government and politics.
In the era of the internet, this means that politicians and parties should see themselves not so much as leaders but as participants in the debate.
This may require something of a change in approach and openness to new forms of engagement, but it is a worthwhile rethink.
At present, online politics is too often about little more than discussion and heated debate.
The challenge now is to guide and translate those conversations into meaningful decisions and actions that have an impact on the world beyond the computer screen.
It is a challenge we have been attempting to meet at ePolitix.com for several years now with interactive services such as the Minister's Forum, policy consultations and more recently our podcasts.
MPs should also be ideally placed to co-opt technologies such as emails, websites, blogs and community discussion groups into the political process, and government and parliament too could do more.
The key to success in this is almost certainly going to be flexibility and a recognition that a monolithic approach to using the internet for any political purpose is doomed to failure.
Openness and engagement should be the basis for Westminster's online strategies.
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Published: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 15:26:46 GMT+01
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