POLITICIAN’S WEBSITE: INFORMATION OR COMMUNICATION MEDIUM?

Abstract

The article attempts the analysis of politician’s personal web pages as the means to maintain continuous communication with the constituents. The paper validates the significance of use of the World Wide Web as the means of political communication, highlighting its popularity, easiness of information distribution and accessibility. Along with the four groups of political web sites suggested by B.Z. Doktorov (sites of government bodies, political parties and movements, press and analytical agencies), the author of this article distinguished the fifth group of sites – personal web pages of politicians. The article analyzes informational and communicational particularities of the web sites, through the example of the web pages of the UK MEPs. The empirical study conducted on may 2013 has shown that very few web sites employ the interactivity features, such as the form of site (a blog instead of the traditional web page), share-links to social networks, links to politician’s personal social network accounts (Twitter or Facebook, provided such accounts exist) or subscription option. The vast majority of the observed web sites are being used only as a means of information distribution. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12731/2218-7405-2014-3-2