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Parliaments 2.0? Digital Media Use by National Parliaments in the EU

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Managing Democracy in the Digital Age

Abstract

How do national parliaments use the Internet and digital media tools? Despite a number of studies on the online presence of individual representatives, this question has rarely been asked of parliaments themselves, and comparative analyses are practically nonexistent. This is not only puzzling in an empirical sense, but also from the normative perspective of democratic theory. Parliaments as institutions can potentially serve as an important neutral information provider for citizens, especially those disenchanted by the competitive side of party politics. Digital and social media can play a strategic role in enhancing communication between citizens and the institutions of representative democracy from livestreaming parliamentary debates, to answering citizens’ questions via email, to humanizing decision-making processes and decision-makers through Facebook posts and photos. Given that these tools are universally available to national parliaments in the European Union, are they actually being used? We find significant variation between member states: the United Kingdom leads in its multidimensional digital and social media strategy, using all tools at its disposal. The parliaments of Western Europe and the Baltic states are active, but to a lesser extent as observed in the United Kingdom. Eastern and Southern Europe are least engaged with citizens online, with Malta, Slovenia, and Croatia bringing up the rear. We briefly discuss explanatory factors for this variation, and avenues for further research.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    An average of 80% of EU citizens were Internet users in 2015, ranging from a low of 60% in Bulgaria to a high of 98% in Luxembourg (Statista 2016).

  2. 2.

    Shown empirically for around two thirds of member states, see Gabriel (2008: 207).

  3. 3.

    See for example the comparative study of the Bundestag and the Houses of Parliament in Schwanholz and Busch (2016).

  4. 4.

    The codebook and full list of results of the coding of all websites can be found in the Appendix.

  5. 5.

    In 2015, an average of 50% of EU citizens between the ages of 16 and 74 were social network users; see Fig. 5.4 in the Appendix.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, University of Goettingen, Goettingen, Germany

    Patrick Theiner, Julia Schwanholz & Andreas Busch

Authors
  1. Patrick Theiner
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  2. Julia Schwanholz
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  3. Andreas Busch
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Julia Schwanholz or Andreas Busch .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. for Political Science, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany

    Julia Schwanholz

  2. School of Media and Communication, University of Leeds, Leeds, Yorkshire, United Kingdom

    Todd Graham

  3. International and European Law, University of Göttingen, Groningen, Germany

    Peter-Tobias Stoll

Appendix

Appendix

Table 5.2 Codebook
Full size table
Table 5.3 Results of coding by country (data collected January 2015)
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Fig. 5.3
figure 3

Internet use by individuals, 2015. Note: % of individuals aged 16–74; Internet use in the 3 months prior to survey; data from 2015. Source: Eurostat (http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&plugin=1&language=en&pcode=tin00028; accessed Sept 1st, 2016)

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Fig. 5.4
figure 4

Individuals using the Internet for participating in social networks, 2015. Note: % of individuals aged 16–74; social network use in the 3 months prior to survey; data from 2015. Source: Eurostat (http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&plugin=1&language=en&pcode=tin00127; accessed Sept 1st, 2016)

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Theiner, P., Schwanholz, J., Busch, A. (2018). Parliaments 2.0? Digital Media Use by National Parliaments in the EU. In: Schwanholz, J., Graham, T., Stoll, PT. (eds) Managing Democracy in the Digital Age. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61708-4_5

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