MEINPARLAMENT.AT Year established: 2008 Website: meinparlament.at Meinparlament.at was launched in summer 2008 – before the Austrian general elections. The platform was developed in collaboration with abgeordnetenwatch.de and the non-profit association Politik Transparent. In October 2009 meinparlament.at was taken over and relaunched by APA-OTS. The platform enables all internet users to directly address their questions to election candidates, the Members of the Austrian Parliament, the Members of the nine Federal Parliaments as well as the Austrian Members of the European Parliament. Meinparlament.at aims: to increase political participation through a new media platform to increase attention of politicians to people’s interests to provide more information about electoral candidates and their political positions to the public to establish political discussion more on political issues (topic-based) which is an important step towards more direct democracy. Meinparlament.at is based on the concept and idea of abgeordnetenwatch.de. Therefore the main chores as well as the “code of conduct” are almost identical. Since the launch in summer 2008, more than 5.200 questions have been posted by users and more than 75% of these queries have been answered by politicians and elections candidates. Meinparlament.at is mirrored on the websites of the four largest in Austria: derstandard.at, diepresse.com, kurier.at, salzburg.com. The answers given by politicians are also published on these online media platforms. In addition to the Q/A feature, meinparlament.at offers two further tools: Candidates Finder is a tool – especially designed for mass media or internet-blogs – that can be implemented on websites. Through combinable filter criteria users can search for politicians / election candidates according to their Video portal provides live-streaming from parliament meetings and videos from politicians Meinparlament.at is a platform to increase the political dialogue between voters and politicians. Certainly, the questions raised by people on this platform also influence the political process itself. Most of the questions deal with topical political issues. In some cases they draw attention to certain aspects and consequences of political projects / parliamentary bills, that otherwise might not have been considered. In this way topics or proposals beyond the focus of mass media are brought up and become part of political discussion. Contacts: Johannes Webhofer: info@meinparlament.at Facebook / Twitter