According to researchers (Tsagarousianou et al. 1998), as well as practitioners (Ranerup 1999), high access to IT is one of the most important factors when aiming at democratic effects. In other words, there is an almost imperative demand for universal access to IT. Hence, we will in the following discuss activities to increase access to Internet in connection with the on-line forums.

Lastly, the functional structure of the on-line forums themselves is likely to affect the debate in the forums, and thus their democratic effects (Stolterman, 1998). The reason why this is so is of a very general character. Any kind of technology enables a span of possible behaviours, as well as limits other behaviours (Stolterman, ibid.). Accordingly, we will focus the functional structure of the on-line forums and its effect on the debate.

The three on-line forums in Göteborg were implemented as a part of a bigger project aiming at using IT for improving services as well as democracy in local government. The project was partly financed by the European Commission, partly by the Local Authority of Göteborg. Three out of 21 local government districts in Göteborg were asked to participate in the project, and agreed to do so. In the summer of 1996 the project group, consisting of among others a technical consultant and a few civil servants from central and district levels of the local authority, decided to implement a homepage in the districts. According to this group the homepage should contain information about local government services, local news in association with the service, as well as an on-line discussion forum. The European Commission supported the project on condition that groups of potential users were to be engaged in the system development process. As a consequence, various user groups were involved in the development process from the autumn of 1996 to the spring in 1997. For example, participants were recruited from the local political parties that are represented in the district councils, as well from other local organisations such as the boards of private schools, childcare institutions, and organisations of pensioners. There were several meetings between the systems developers and the user representatives. However, when subsequently asked if their own organisation used the Internet and the homepage/forum, only two out of nine user representatives knew this to be the case. According to these experiences, at the time of the interviews (late 1997), very few of these actually used the Internet in local government politics apart from the very politicians that were involved in the project itself.

In Sölvesborg the on-line forum was also initiated as a part of a project with the aim of improving services as well as democracy in local government with the help of IT. As a consequence, by the end of 1997 a new version of the local government homepage was implemented that provided some interactive services, but also an on-line discussion forum. By contrast with the three districts in Göteborg no potential user groups took part in the implementation process in Sölvesborg. Instead, the work was carried out by a technician and some civil servants that otherwise were working with local government homepages and citizen dissemination.

As a part of the implementation project in Göteborg three public computers were placed in each one of the three districts. Four of the leading local politicians in the districts were given a computer and some education. Schools in the districts were also gradually provided with Internet access, which is very similar to other cities in Sweden. However, in Göteborg there was an intention of increasing the access to Internet by other measures. Very late in the period of investigation, i.e=2E in December 1998, an agreement was reached with an Internet supplier about providing citizens with Internet access at a reduced rate. In February 1999 this offer had been accepted by 30,000 inhabitants according to informants (Jurnell 1999). Göteborg has about 460,000 inhabitants in total. The three districts in Göteborg, as well as in the municipality of Sölvesborg, have about 15,000 inhabitants respectively.

In Sölvesborg no public computers were introduced as a part of the implementation process, but a few ones were already accessible at e.g. public libraries. Also, no politicians were given access to computers and to Internet as a part of the process. However, five politicians already had access to a computer and to Internet at their offices. In a similar way as in Göteborg, there was in Sölvesborg an intention of giving citizens access to Internet at a reduced rate, but due to limited financial resources this idea had to be abandoned.

In the on-line forums in the three districts of Göteborg the citizens have been allowed to discuss issues according to their own choice since the opening of the forums in January 1997. Before publication the contributions are checked by a moderator, but not many contributions have actually been censored. However, as a consequence of this activity, the on-line forums in two of the districts have been closed when the moderators were out of duty. In Sölvesborg there has been no human moderator, but instead there was an automatic control that the contributions not contained what is considered as rude language. Furthermore, between the introduction in January 1998, and November 1998, the forum in Sölvesborg has only welcomed a discussion about certain suggested issues. It was not until December 1998 that the choice of issues was completely left to the citizens. The forum in Sölvesborg has been closed between July 1997 and October 1998 much in the same way as in Göteborg.

A first strategy would be to introduce a certain quality of the Community Networks to this genuinely Swedish context, i.e. that they are implemented with the help of various citizen groups and local organisations (Schuler 1996). Moreover, in most Community Networks there is continuous user involvement in the implementation process (Ranerup 1996), as well as afterwards. Therefore, with the Community Networks as a source of inspiration local citizen groups, e.g. the parents of children at school or in childcare, as well as the relatives of elderly that receive service from local government, might be helped by local government to get access to Internet. As a consequence, they would be able to build their own Virtual Community or network. As a first step, the citizen groups might find it useful to share information between themselves, as well as discuss various issues on-line. However, they can also be offered the opportunity to participate in the implementation process in association with the local government homepage and the on-line forum. In this way, the common group interest of parents or relatives to participate in a Virtual Community that exists (IT commission 1997) will be used as a ground for activity. This is seen as opposed to a situation where a common place of residence is taken as a sufficient guarantee that the community will be an active one (Croon & Ågren 1998).

A strategy like this might be criticised for being a way of colonising citizen groups, so that they become a part of the political structure of local government (Castells 1997, Montin 1998). However, many citizen groups and non-governmental organisations themselves are eager to take advantage of modern technology (Hallam & Murray 1998), which makes them very suitable as testbeds for how Internet could be used for improving democracy (Olsson 1999). Also, this might be a way of including citizen groups that are working with school issues, childcare issues etc in a democratic structure that counteracts the risk of fragmentation in situations where an organisation focus only one kind of issues at a time. This is a risk that is noticed by current research in political science (Montin ibid.).

A second strategy would be to make use of the interest to participate in a debate on other questions than local government politics that many people have according other experiences (Tambini 1998). Or put simply: we could try to sell the discussion forum as a local chat area where the choice of issues is left to the citizens. This is a way of using the pleasure of chatting without any limitations regarding issues that can be discussed etc (Jones 1997). The many discussion groups that exist on the Internet as a whole might serve as an argument in favour of that these kinds of discussions attract attention. However, the ultimate goal of on-line discussions is not necessarily that one arrives at a common point of view. Instead, as is argued in Robins (1995), the on-line forum might serve as an arena for a discussion between citizens with different standpoints:

In other words, the on-line discussion might be of value in itself even if it not results in the kind of common values and community spirit that are associated with Community Networks (Robins ibid., Schuler 1996).

On the other hand, one might very well ask if it is good for democracy to discuss absolutely everything that is in accordance with the freedom of expression? Maybe a complete open agenda for discussion can be negative when weak groups in society are treated as an issue for discussion, but do not themselves participate in the deliberative process as such=2E This was the case in e.g. Sölvesborg where there was a short discussion about policy towards immigrants with Swedish discussants only.

Lastly, a third strategy might be to more seriously involve the politicians in the on-line forum as such. The importance of this kind of strategy was emphasised in the discussion in the four on-line forums where many of the contributors wanted the politicians to be more active in the debate. This strategy also includes that all politicians should be given access to Internet, as well as an email address that is published on the net and otherwise whenever there is a chance of doing so. Another part of it would be to emphasise how important it is for the sake of democracy that the politicians actually contribute to the debate in the on-line forums. In fact, the very participation by the politicians in itself makes it even more likely that the debate actually will affect the political process (Olsson ibid.). Another suggestion might be that politicians use the Internet in general, and the forums in particular, as a tool for collecting the opinions on various ‘hot’ issues according to their own choice. Hopefully, several politicians will take part in such a process in which ideas about issues are generated. In Sölvesborg, only one politician took part in the discussion about important issues that could be introduced in the on-line forum. Furthermore, the discussions about one single issue at the time in Sölvesborg can not be characterised as a success. Consequently, a conclusion from our experiences might be that politicians from several political parties should contribute to create a discussion about the broadest possible range of issues.

In other words: one strategy is to make the Internet at large into a political tool that is used extensively in local politics by the politicians and also hopefully by the citizens. As thus, this strategy would be a way of more actively using Internet in an already established political context. This has been defined as a critical success factor for Internet to be able to improve democracy (Buchstein 1997). However, as we have shown above, in spite of the seemingly close connection between the forums and local government, this has not been done to a sufficient degree. But, is this not a defensive strategy, in which we only use a fraction of the immense potential of the technology? Mark Poster, a Professor of History, answers that:

Robins, K. (1995) ‘Cyberspace and the World We Live In’, Body & Society, 12, 3-4: 135-155.