Information and interaction in the Spanish parliament websites

Abstract

At the end of the last term of the Spanish Parliament (2004-2008) all the seventeen regional legislative assemblies, as well as the Congress and the Senate, had their own websites available. This article presents the results of a descriptive research made in 2008. The main aim of this study is to fi nd out what kind of information the Spanish parliaments, at both national and regional level, disseminate through their sites on the Internet, and what information sharing tools these virtual places off er the citizens to contact either the parliaments or the representatives. The data show that Spanish assemblies are still using mostly their websites to promote the parliamentarian institution as a virtual storefront, to the detriment of the function of communication with citizens.