Voters yet to take advantage of internet
Use of the internet doubled for the last election but the technology has yet to bring a breakthrough in encouraging voter participation, a new report suggests.
Research by the Hansard Society found that 15 per cent of voters went online at the last election to gain information but said that the internet was mostly used by political parties to provide a one-way conversation.
People were given information but there was rarely the opportunity for them to become involved in a dialogue with parties, it found, while only three per cent of people expected to have contact with their MPs now the election is over.
“There can be little doubt about the potential of the internet as a medium of democratic interactivity,” said Stephen Coleman, professor in e-democracy at Oxford university.
“But unless and until parties, politicians and pundits abandon the one-way conversation that has come to characterise contemporary politics, no amount of broadband gee-whizzery will save them from the collective yawns of the demos.”
