Debate practices in French political party forums

摘要

During the last French presidential election, political party web forums have become a major place of political debate. In order to evaluate the use of this e-governance technology, we analysed the three main party forums (Socialist, Conservative and Liberal) between November 2006 and April 2007. We analysed the total levels of participation and interactivity and the pragmatic features of a sample of 'political debate' threads. Our results point out the influence of institutional instructions on debate forms. The availability of status cues also seems to have specific effects as shown in the 'computer-mediated groups' studies.