… zumindest nicht britische Politik-Blogs und zumindest nicht als Beitrag zur parlamentarischen Demokratie. Sagt eine Studie der Hansard Society aus der der GUARDIAN zitiert.

The quality of comment and debate on political blogs is often poor or even non-existent, and the jury is still out on whether they will ever make a significant contribution to parliamentary democracy […]

Von den acht beauftragten Blog-Beobachtern, wollte nur einer nach der Studie einige der politischen Blogs weiterbesuchen. Einer der Blog-Beobachter: ein gewisser Howard Dean.

The jurors were impressed by the “look and feel” of the blogs, and found some of their authors witty and insightful. However, they also complained the postings could be tedious, long-winded and opinionated. Most found that their own contributions were ignored.

The report says content is at the root of the problem. “The jurors could not find enough to empathise, or even to disagree with, in what they read.” Bloggers, particularly MPs and other elected politicians, must continue to experiment with the format and find ways to “ask” rather than “tell” their readers.

Ein Problem im Zusammenhang mit Politiker-Blogs fasst einer der Wissenschaftler so zusammen:

“The public will never relax in their company and will be ever suspicious that today’s ‘spontaneous’ blog entry was yesterday’s faxed ‘message’ from the party HQ.” […]

The Hansard Society also expressed concern at the possibility that the next general election would inspire a wave of homogenous, party-approved campaign blogs. “Should we … expect a launch of off-the-shelf party weblogs in the run-up to the forthcoming UK elections, modelled on their American counterparts and run by blogmasters in party headquarters, as it happened in the States?”