Do citizens `do politics with words´?

The article closely examines the most frequently used online discussion forums that are situated on Swedish local government Web sites. An evaluation is made of their potential to satisfy the ideal of deliberative democracy in which a discussion that contains an exchange of opinions is highly estimated. A further focus is on to what extent they are used by citizens for co-ordinating political activities. In a large majority of the forums, the online debate was dominated by political issues, rather than conversation in general. Also, in a large majority of the forums most of the contributions were part of a dialogue. Both these results are in accordance with the ideal of deliberative democracy. However, with a few exceptions the forums were not used by citizens for co-ordinating political activities. As thus, these experiences give a rather nuanced picture of the democratic potential of online forums