'Scattergun' or 'rifle' approach to communication: MPs in the blogosphere

Issue title: Political Blogs and Representative Democracy

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Jackson, Nigel^a

Affiliations: [a] Plymouth Business School, University of Plymouth, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth, Devon, PL4 8AA, UK. E-mail: [email protected] | Institute of Communications Studies, Leeds University, Leeds, UK

Abstract: The existing literature suggests that MPs will use a weblog to promote their activities to constituents in a very similar way to how they use websites. Yet, the discussion of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 suggests that the nature of this debate is evolving. This article, based on a three month content analysis of seven MPs' weblogs, and interviews with four of these blogging MPs, seeks to identify what impact a weblog has on their workload, roles and how they communicate. The findings suggest that contrary to some of the existing literature, MPs do not use a weblog to support existing roles, such as their constituency role. Rather, a weblog appears to have a very narrow and specific role to enhance debate within a separate e-constituency.

DOI: 10.3233/IP-2008-0138

Journal: Information Polity, vol. 13, no. 1-2, pp. 57-69, 2008