DCP 2000 Distributed Collective Practices, Social Sciences and the Humanities AN ACTOR’S VIEWS ON DISTRIBUTED COLLECTIVE PRACTICES IN THE POLITICAL ARENA 1 Godefroy Beauvallet September 2000 v2.5 Since 1998, the use of web-based tools and tricks in the political arena has significantly grown in France – as throughout the world. Political bodies, trade unions, the media and the press, Government bodies, public administrations and parliamentary offices started a presence online ; email has become the main collaborative tool between operational- level executives in the political business ; forums and mailing-list regroup militants and activists within political parties, associations and lobbies. Nevertheless, several recent communication mistakes show that the reshaping of political work processes and habits by the rise of the information society is still in its infancy. In France, the Prime Minister’s image suffered a severe blow when his first and widely publicised live appearance at a 1999 webcast interview was inaccessible for two hours because of demand overflow ; the first experiments of forums used as “direct democracy” tools have been regularly disappointing, either for lack of focus and interest, or for high-jacking by hate groups and such. 1 Warning : these are my – an adviser to a minister and engineer in IT – personal views, and they probably will sound odd – if not naive – to trained academics. They do not reflect in any way an official position of the ministry nor of the French administration.