Political Engagement in Local Swedish Referenda

Hamburg.
The next session at ECREA 2010 starts with Elisabeth Stúr, whose interest is in the mediated debates in the lead-up to a referendum in a small community in Sweden about the extension of a hydroelectric power scheme. In this case, public opinion was communicated both through old and new media, as well as through public meetings, raising the question to what extent political debates moved to new media platforms.

The two local papers were considered to be the most important sources, and most reliable for inhabitants of the region; public meetings also played an important role. The Internet was less important, and blogs were seen as least reliable here. This was in part because the profusion of Websites and blogs made it difficult to follow the debate online; it was also fragmented because of the shortness of online comments. Anonymity also made these sites less reliable. Increasingly, there was a shift towards smaller in-groups debating the issues, leaving others behind.

There were three phases here: a great interest in debating things online at first, with some sites getting established; a second phase in which a number of sites had been established and intense debates involving many voices ensued; and a third phase where interest waned as blogs were increasingly seen as less transparent and people moved back to older media.