Större möjligheter än intresse : Medborgarkultur och deliberativ diskurs på svenska socialpolitiska hemsidor

Sammanfattning: Engelsk titel: Greater opportunities than interests : Civic culture and deliberative discourse on Swedish NGO websites This is a critical and normative study, which examines a selection of Swedish NGO websites as potential forums for civic culture and deliberative discourse in the public sphere. Sociocultural, political and sociological and media and communication theories are combined. The work is made within a Habermasian tradition, but the importance of a hermeneutic methodology is stressed, along with the sociocultural perspective to reach an understanding of why citizens engage in politics. In contrast to much of the earlier research concerning deliberative discourses on the Internet, a more informal understanding of how people discuss politics is stressed. The questions are: What kind of civic role do the websites discursive dimensions address? What kind of civic identity do the users address in the websites resource dimensions? The empirical results are both discouraging and encouraging for advocates who put their trust in the Internet as a potential civic tool, in these times when neoliberal models of citiziens are prioritizing citizens as consumers, thus neglecting citizens as political actors. The study reveals that the websites show good results in general, regarding the civic roles and identities of the websites as both discourse and resource for the users. Yet, as they consitute public arenas for, and foster civic culture and deliberative discourse, they still are a marginal phenomenon. There still exists a digital divide in Sweden, but the access to and knowledge of how to use the Internet is not the biggest issue. The main problem is the lack of general interest - only a couple of thousand people visit and use the websites as civic tools for discussion and deliberation. The tendency, however, is that a greater number of citizens are getting involved in the NGO websites, which constitute a small alternative part of the Internet as a public sphere.