 So, as you can see, I'm talking about the specific online tool that my society developed out of FACTSURMP. As many contributions to this conference seem to show, the potential of the internet to increase electoral turnout and to increase civic engagement, political participation, and also address the deficits in liberal democracy in the relationship between the elected and their electors that seem to be, you know, continued in a very lively manner this discussion about that potential. And in that discussion, I think we've seen that there are optimists and pessimists and some in between. That's also a discussion that deals with the issues around liberal democracy. And that's a debate that is always necessary, and it's certainly necessary today, given the fact that the liberal model of democracy is under threat, not just by authoritarian thinking, but also by very populist conceptions about democracy, which may, in the end, result more in the tyranny of a majority rather than in the good society. So I think that the contemporary success of anti-liberalism in any guise has also to do with the perception of the elected, of the representatives as remote aloof detached, and that's probably the least of the worst of the labors attached to them. And then, for these and other reasons, I think the elected is amongst the least trusted professions, amongst the least trusted persons in many countries. And that raises the question of how members of elected bodies, either local or supranational in the European parliament sense, can build a stronger relationship, stronger communicated relationships with citizens. So I use my time here to focus on this question with reference to this particular eDemocracy tool right to them. This is my first attempt, one of my attempts to sort of dabble with the issue of civic technology and let's see how that goes. First just a few words on what right to them actually is for those of you who don't know of it. It's a very simple eDemocracy tool that exists in the UK and I believe also out with the UK. That's how it works. You just put in your postcode and you get the names of your local councillors, of your members of parliament, for example, and then you can choose to contact them in a bunch if there's more than one member of parliament, for example, for your constituency or more than one councillor and your multi-councillor ward, or you just contact one of them via an email. That email gets counted as far as I understand it by right to them. The further exchange between the two sides then happens via a normal email and is no longer monitored. So I could choose to contact my local councillor or my member of the European parliament through this particular tool. On the bottom of the slide you have my society's general, I suppose, mission statement if you'd like at the time and I did the research and I think it shows that my society is on the optimist side of the spectrum and it comes to the possibilities of the internet to make democracy better if you see what they're saying. It's a digital tool that enables citizens to exert power over institutions and decision makers and so on and so forth. So certainly there is a degree of optimism when it comes to my society's products and also with relation to right to them. Just a bit of further data on right to them that I got from my society's own studies. I'm very much out of date here with the data but that's all I could get. The 2010 data shows us who actually gets the messages via right to them. That's the most recent data that I have but maybe you can educate me here on that point. Most data in the UK context go to members of the Westminster parliament down in London and then the second most contacted are local councillors followed by the other category that includes members of the Scottish Parliament and the Irish Assembly and so on and so forth. So that's the usage pattern or parts of it anyway. My research had a particular objective which is this to empirically analyse based on perceptions of Scottish local councillors and members of the Scottish Parliament where the right to them can strengthen interactivity between citizens and the elected and thereby contribute to revitalising liberal democracy. So my paper in a sense I suppose tries to address the conference's focus on the impact of civic technologies on society. On the slide before this one you saw that most contacts go to at least in 2010 went to members of the British Parliament down in Westminster. So why my focus on Scotland? That's where I live so it has made practical sense to do this focus given my research methods. But also I thought I have to admit here my data is a bit dated in 2014. That year was important for Scotland given the fact that Scotland had a chance to say yes or no to staying within the United Kingdom. You know it said yes to staying in the UK. But what was quite remarkable about that year was that people in Scotland were feeling quite political so people were in that sense engaging with politics on this particular on this on this grand question. So my expectation was that that year would see a good uptake of WTT usage by people in Scotland. To address this research objective I looked I chose a particular framework to sort of measure or to sort of put into practice the kinds of communication that are possible. And that is young pandeaks for level matrix for level matrix on levels of interactivity. This is about these levels describe any kind of interactivity. It could be face to face it could be face to face but via an ICT tool if you like could be between machines could be between people and machines. So he distinguishes in his work between four levels. They accumulate so the one at the bottom number four is the sort of most interactive if you like. There's two way communication where one action requires leads to one reaction. There's synchronous communication where an uninterrupted sequence of one reaction following an action. A third level is reached when interactors have a certain degree of control over the communication. For example with regards to that could swap their roles for example and they can choose any topic they like in their interaction. And the fourth level is reached when interactors share understanding of context. So that is about actors requiring or interactors requiring a consciousness and therefore this level is still reserved to humans and their interactions following from deep for following from dark. So in other words these levels start at the very simple level and then go up to the highest level at number four. And that could be but doesn't have to be ICT mediated. This fourth level of interactivity. Just a few words on existing research on WTT there isn't that much out there as far as I could tell in my literature research. The research that does tackle it is kind of organized according to two themes really. Either it's about improving the interactivity, the communication between the two sides or it is about policing the politician to make for a better democracy. Whatever the contradictions may be in that sort of idea about whether policing leads to better democracy. And this paper looks at the question of interactivity only, at communication only. Very briefly on the research methods, an e-survey with local councillors and members of the Scottish Parliament and a few interviews, much fewer than I had hoped for but I think it was a busy time for elected politicians in Scotland in 2014. I start from a very general level here. People, I wanted to hear whether people actually, whether my two populations knew about right to them and you can see that local councillors were far less aware of its existence than members of the Scottish Parliament. A few bit more basic data in terms of whether people had been connected in the past and contrary to the earlier data, it seems that members of the Scottish Parliament had received more contacts via this particular tool than local councillors, that's the bar to the right. Then I thought I put this question to my two populations even though I kind of had a hunch for the answer. Councillors tend to, that's of course all self-reported data, tend to respond more often personally to WTT contacts than parliamentarians. I suppose the latter have more staff at their disposition to kind of handle communication with their constituents. So this wasn't really surprising. Again, self-reported response rates here in terms of how many people actually do respond to messages coming in via right to them means that both populations say, well of course we do respond to the large majority of those messages coming in irrespective of their nature. Let's see what I can say about these, you know, the question of interactivity and communication between the two sides. I sought to understand what sort of staff councillors and members of parliament get into the inbox via right to them. I just want to address a few of those here, those tiny thin arrows, apologies for that. The most common type of message that local councillors get is that of questions and comments on a local issue that makes sense, only fairly few requests were about doing something about a particular issue which was a bit surprising. With MSPs, the Scottish parliamentarians, most communication consists of questions and comments on constituency or Scottish issues. So people do make comments on both of things that affect them locally, the constituency, but also talked about them on the larger Scottish issues. There were not many questions for both populations about the political party that either the councillor or the MSP is affiliated to, and it seems that both, that users for both populations, so to speak, pitched their email at the right level. So as a citizen who would email the local councillors, I would not email them about British issues or Scottish issues but about local issues. And the same applies to MSPs and people seem to use the tool in that manner. They didn't address too many questions to the local councillor on British politics, for example, even though there were some. So to put a bit more colour to the data from the survey, I thought I have put some interview excerpts on the slide which show that there maybe is an issue with right to them in terms of its potential to stimulate interactivity between voters or citizens and their representatives. It seems from what I heard from my interviews is that, well, WTT serves as a lobbying tool. So people are using a lot this kind of thing that they copy and paste prefabricated messages from larger campaign organisations into the sort of email box on right to them and send that off to their MSP or local councillor. So one quotation here is by an MSP. People are not really saying what they think on right to them. They're just copying and pasting emails from these larger organisations so that they are sent to their local councillor or in this case the MSP. A councillor told me that these emails come in sort of blocks so it depends on some campaign group having an idea to tell its members to do this. WTT's almost entirely campaign-based was his, I think, opinion. Another MSP said that WTT is ideal for special interest groups trying to generate a pressure of numbers in respect of any issue. Also I found from what people said to me in the interviews that WTT does not really simulate much exchange or even deliberation on a policy issue. MSP told me it tends to be silence after my response because of the campaigns, these copy and paste messages that they obtain. But you might get one or two coming back and saying well I disagree with you or they become abusive then. A councillor said to me that you get one email and then you reply and then you lose them at that. Nobody really wants to get into a huge discussion via email. I would not want a discussion like that to happen. Further bits of data from the survey to complement the picture from the interviews. I put a number of statements to my respondents and asked them to rate these statements and if you are highlighted here again with barely visible red arrows, it's not too bad. For example, when I asked whether emails coming through right to them have allowed MSPs to get a better insight into issues that may travel their constituents, whether it builds trust between the two sides or whether it's great for communicating with citizens, the responses were cautiously positive or only cautiously positive on these questions. At the same time it seems that respondents in the two populations that applies to both MSPs and councillors they didn't feel under undue pressure from messages coming in from right to them or under permanent scrutiny. I don't have much time for further detail here but I think the message is that respondents were less positive about the two than one would have hoped maybe, but they weren't negative about it either and the same really applies to local councillors as well. I thought then where to come towards the conclusion of my presentation here to put this question here where does it make a difference at all to the communication between the two sides where I think that from the interviews again I gleaned that the two did not foster stronger relationships between voters and or citizens and representatives. One councillor told me that right to them has not improved contacts to my constituents, I think getting normal emails, people could happily tell you a story. They then if you get back to them and say can you provide me with a contact number and then I can speak with you on, I will do that. I wouldn't do that with right to them because of the tone that I've had so far with some of the communication, with some of the emails coming through right to them. Another councillor said that it's like basically filling in a form and going that's my problem, sort it. It also seems from the interviews that WTT generates more contacts by the well-informed citizens. That goes back I guess to the issue of the digital divide or gap. People who write, that's from a councillor again, people who write via right to them, they are more political and they are more informed than the average person who just is complaining about their bins. So to conclude, to summarize very quickly, it seems that citizens make different use or different than intended use of right to them given this issue that was a big issue in the interviews about the copy and paste emails. It doesn't seem to sort of lead to deliberation of policy issues rather than rather the represented inform the representatives about their views, demands and new issues. And neither side seems to seek a discussion initiated by right to them email through it. It doesn't seem to simulate personal contacts, only rarely are relationships built. I glean from the interviews and then to answer my research question it seems to lead to only the first level of interactivity to a synchronous communication. And then one recommendation to finish off this piece is that I heard from councillors and MSPs that they would have appreciated more kind of communication from my society in terms of how does this tool work that I am part of by being sort of inserted into the mailing list if you like, how does it work, how is it monitored, how can we avoid any dysfunctions in terms of well we get these emails as a councillor you would get an email from right to them but in a multi-member board all others might get the same email so all councillors get onto the council offices to get this issue sorted to get a request. So there's a duplication of effort on the councillor side, that kind of stuff. So that was something that I took from the interviews more communication from my society to those who are meant to be using on this side of the spectrum and this side of the coin so to speak to them would be much appreciated and that's my time up I think as well. Thank you very much.