Politisk kommunikation och IKT : En analys ur politikernas perspektiv i Västerås kommun

The purpose of this paper is to see how politicians use Internet communication in their daily work and how they use it to interact with citizens of Vasteras city. To reach my conclusions I used both theoretical methods such as literature studies and qualitative interviews with the towns 11 trustees. Accoarding to this study the politicians saw not only a lot of potentials and advantages in Internet communication but also many difficulties and obstacles. In this case the cons far exceeded the pros. One of the main reason is the bad experiences which caused by rasist attacks/threats made to politicians and also the difficulties in handling of sensitiv documents which was seen as a stress factor. Vasteras home page is more seen as a very inert two way communication channel, due to the lack of discussion/debate forum. Other forms of communication via other media is prefered. Obviously IT is a fast and complementary media but face to face communication is prioritized rather than computer communication. E- democracy, E- meeting, E- discussion can not replace face to face communication. There is a strong belief among the municipal executive committee in the representative democracy as the best functional political system. The political climate characterizes as a sort of conservatism or pessimism when it concerns IT and democracy. Despite all of this, there are many optimistic attitudes about IT in a future perspective. Marketing and education are essential elements that benefit to more dialog and interactivity which can influence the quality of democracy. The Internet is perceived by many of respondants as an excellent horizontal communication than vertical