The Hansard Society has a new report out which asks the public what they want out of politicians and the political system online.

Although many studies have looked at what politicians do or don’t do online, those looking at what the public actually wants are rather rarer. That makes this a particularly welcome report and is based on:

Two samples, the first is a national survey of individuals who are already online and the second a group of ‘digital leaders’; individuals with a strong interest in social media and politics. The first group is representative of digital Britain and the second group are the ‘early adopters’ of social media and digital technologies.

In many ways the report paints a positive picture, concluding that the country has:

An online population who are actively involved in civic and political life and who see the internet as beneficial for this.

However, this optimism should be tempered with the knowledge that other research has often seen people draw a distinction between being interested in issues and seeing the connection between them and voting, political parties or election results. Although the report has apparently very healthy figures for the proportion of people who have got engaged with the political system, this includes registering to vote – an important and welcome step, but one whose inclusion boosts the headline figures.

Even so, 39% had taken part in a government or other official consultation or survey in the last year and 37% have donated to a campaigning organisation. There are many people willing to interact and get involved – if approached in the right way.

The internet is the right way for many people, with just under half (49%) of respondents saying they would generally prefer to use the internet to participate in civic and political activities and less than one in five (17%) disagreeing. Using the internet to find out more about issues is particularly popular, but less than half (48%) say they can with confidence join in debates through posting comments. 15% are interested in doing that, but not confident whilst 37% are not interested in doing that at all.

Amongst the “digital leaders”, Twitter is the second most popular source of information for finding out about what MPs are doing (behind websites but ahead of, amongst others, Facebook and YouTube). Parliament’s own website and Twitter feed get particular praise.

Overall, the report finds that people want to engage in two-way conversation with politicians, liking the opportunities to interact and expecting them to respond. That runs into practical problems though: there are not enough hours in the day for a politician to engage meaningfully with all their constituents regularly and arguments for more staffing for MPs – or better pay for councillors so more can be full time – are unlikely to go down well.

That is why I think the politicians who will prosper the most are those who find ways of using the online world to communicate in ways that present themselves as a human (rather than a faceless politico) and responsive, but without getting mired in lots of one-to-one conversations.