Copenhagen.
Finally on to Selva Ersöz, who continues the Turkish theme at COST298. She notes the change in political discourse with the increasing use of the Internet - as some hope, Internet use may improve citizens' knowledge of political affairs, and enable them to participate in political processes more directly, while others fear misinformation, polarisation, and the continued domination of particular social classes.
Selva's study (during May/June 2007) examined the interactive features of four key political sites in Turkey, focussing on the question of whether they enabled better online political communication between citizens or whether they simply republished information available elsewhere. (Interactivity is divided here into user-to-user, user-to-document, and user-to-system interactivity.)
Sites studied included the site of the Turkish parliament, where interactivity is largely limited to accessing online documents; the Ministry of Justice site, some more user feedback mechanisms are available; the Head Office for Population and Citizenship in the Interior Ministry, where the approach is more image-heavy; and the Social Security Establishment site, which mainly provides information for searching, and pushes users to its telephone hotline.
In each site, therefore, user-to-document and user-to-system interactivity are present, if to limited extent; very little user-to-user interaction is possible or envisaged - in spite of various e-government initiatives introduced or promised by the government. Still, are these the first tentative steps towards a transformation towards a more horizontal form of political communication - or does the continued communcative dominance of Turkish government organisations limit e-democracy possibilities?
