The Australian public and politics online

I uploaded a paper recently presented at the PSA annual conference [2007] to the publications section of my website.
Namely:

Gibson, R. K., Lusoli, W., & Ward, S. (2007). The Australian public and politics online: reinforcing or reinventing representation?. Paper presented at the Annual conference of the PSA, University of Bath, 12-14 April 2007.

Fears for the health of representative politics in advanced industrial democracies have gained increasing prominence in recent years with observers pointing to a growing body of evidence that citizens are disengaging from formal politics. One of the solutions put forward to address these perceived problems is the incorporation by politicians and parliaments of new communication channels such as the Internet and the WWW. To date, however, attention has focused largely on the supply-side of online engagement by politicians and legislatures rather than on levels of demand and actual use among citizens, with governments frequently being rated on their performance via international league tables. This paper aims to provide a ‘bottom-up’ perspective to the debate in the Australian context, looking at the e-democracy and particularly e-representation debate from the public’s perspective. Specifically we address two key questions: how much support do such initiatives attract? And can they bring about the mobilisation of less politically engaged groups? Our findings show that while Australians broadly support the roll-out of e-representation tools, current interaction levels are low. Secondly, while they may have the potential to engage some younger people in the political process, widespread mobilisation is unlikely.