Rachel Gibson

A proposed methodology for studying the function and effectiveness of party and candidate web sites

The growth of party and candidate activity on the World Wide Web over the past 5 years has provoked much comment and criticism. Although initially most assessments were descriptive and anecdotal, more recent studies have taken a more systematic and quantitative approach to this topic. This article builds on the existing literature by developing a coding scheme that addresses two basic questions applicable to all political Web sites: (a) what the purpose of the sites are, and (b) how effectively they deliver their contents. In doing so, this article attempts to standardize the study of party Web sites and to promote the growth of cross-national and longitudinal comparative research in this area.

Election Campaigning on the WWW in the US and the UK: A Comparative Analysis

This article is a comparative analysis of British and American parties and candidate election campaigning on the World Wide Web during the Presidential and General Elections of 2000 and 2001, respectively. The central questions are twofold: (1) Do parties differ across the two systems in terms of how they use the Web as a campaign tool? (2) Does the Web promote a more balanced or equalized exposure for party messages than other media? A combination of interview data, content analysis of sites and analysis of online and offline media coverage of the election is used to investigate these questions. Conclusions are drawn about the similarity of Web campaigning across the two countries and about the increasing dominance of the major parties, particularly in the UK.

Changing Campaign Communications: A Party-Centered Theory of Professionalized Campaigning

Models explaining the rise of American-style or so-called postmodern campaigning have focused primarily on changes taking place at the systemic level. While these models help explain variance across countries where these techniques are used, they do not explain variations among individual parties. Given that not all parties adopt these tactics and techniques at the same time, the authors argue that there are party-specific variables that need to be taken into account when understanding the shift to the new campaigning era. Building on the existing literature, the authors identify the key traits of what they term professionalized campaigning and the variables that prime a party to adopt it. The article goes on to develop a causal model, based on external and internal party events or shocks, that explains why a particular party would embrace this new style of campaigning. Finally, the authors operationalize their theory and develop indicators to measure the key variables for empirical testing.

Political Parties and the Internet: Net Gain?

From the Publisher: This book provides an assessment of how political parties are adapting to the rise of new ICTs, and what the consequences of that adaptation will be. It includes case studies of the US, the UK, Australia, Korea, Mexico, France, Romania and the Mediterranean region.

Party Change, Social Media and the Rise of ‘Citizen-initiated’ Campaigning

This article argues that digital media are introducing a new grassroots-based mode of ‘citizen-initiated campaigning’ (CIC) that challenges the dominant professionalized model of campaign management by devolving power over core tasks to the grassroots. After defining the practice through reference to the 2008 campaign of Barack Obama and online parties literature, we devise a measure of CIC that is applied to UK parties in the 2010 election. Our findings show that CIC is emerging outside the U.S. and adoption is associated with major party status, although it may be of particular appeal to political actors facing a resource deficit. The conclusions focus on the implications of CIC for new forms of party membership, indirect voter mobilization and the contextual factors influencing this new model of campaigning.

Nationalizing and Normalizing the Local? A Comparative Analysis of Online Candidate Campaigning in Australia and Britain

ABSTRACT This paper provides a comparative analysis of the distribution, drivers, and contents of Web campaigning at the local level in British and Australian national elections. After comparing the extent of Web campaigning among candidates in the 2004 Australian and 2005 British General Elections, analysis of the factors linked to Web campaigning in each country is undertaken and the contents and style of their Web use systematically recorded and compared. The results reveal a pattern of major party dominance in both countries, although British candidates are more active online overall. In addition, while the approach and contents of Web campaigns are remarkably similar, the triggers to Web campaigning are found to differ across the two contexts. The findings are seen as suggesting that while national context may influence baseline levels of e-campaign interest or “readiness,” the actual quality of online campaigning is taking on a more standardized form. The implications of the results are discussed in light of the rise in more “professionalized” styles of campaigning worldwide and the prospects for normalization of politics on the Web.

The Australian public and politics on-line: Reinforcing or reinventing representation?

Fears for the health of representative politics in advanced industrial democracies have gained prominence in recent years with observers pointing to a growing body of evidence that citizens are disengaging from formal politics. One of the solutions put forward to address these perceived problems is the incorporation, by politicians, of new communication channels, such as the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW). To date, however, attention has focused largely on the supply-side of on-line engagement by politicians rather than on levels of demand and actual use among citizens. This article provides a ‘bottom – up’ perspective to the debate in the Australian context, looking at the e-democracy and, particularly, e-representation debate from the publics viewpoint. Specifically, we address two questions: how much support do such e-initiatives attract? And can they bring about the mobilisation of less politically engaged groups? Our findings show that although Australians broadly support the roll-out of e-representation tools, current interaction levels are low. Second, although they may have the potential to engage some younger people in the political process, widespread mobilisation is unlikely to occur in the near future.

Blogs, news and credibility

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the emergence of blogging in the news sphere. If blogs represent a genuinely new breed of news provision, then they should adhere to some of the founding principles of mainstream news and journalism. A key principle in this respect is news credibitility.Design/methodology/approach – This paper presents a review of recent literature about news blogging and assesses whether news blogs manifest many of the core attributes of mainstream news and journalism. The review considers the attributes that have previously been identified as defining good quality news and competent journalism and then applies some of these principles to “news” blogging.Findings – There is no doubt that blogs have emerged as news sources of increasing significance and there have been occasions when they can be influential in setting news agendas. The essential qualities of credibitiltiy and capturing public trust in the news sphere, however, often depends upon the established reputation ...

PARTIES IN THE DIGITAL AGE—A REVIEW ARTICLE

This article reviews and profiles the literature on the changes to political parties’ organisation and operation resulting from the rise of the new digital information and communication technologies (ICTs). Its main aim is to offer an understanding of the extent to which the Internet in its dominant forms (i.e. WWW and email), has brought about a shift in the traditional role and relevance of parties in democratic society, according to the growing literature on this topic. Since parties first established a public presence in cyberspace in the mid-1990s by setting up websites, there has been a flurry of speculation and an increasing amount of empirical study of this process of adaptation. In general, these studies can be seen as covering one of three broad areas: (1) the intra-party arena, focusing on how parties are connecting (or not) with their membership using new ICTs to wire up their internal communication mechanisms; (2) the inter-party arena, examining and comparing parties’ online campaigning efforts and, in particular, the implications for minor party competitiveness and external relations with the electorate—does it generate more support? And finally (3) the systemic arena, looking more broadly at how parties’ adaptation to new ICTs will affect their position in the democratic sphere and what new forms or model of party might emerge. In drawing together these studies, therefore, the article aims to address a range of specific questions, such as: whether new ICTs are actually helping parties to recruit and retain members; to what extent the new media are helping newer and smaller parties to compete on a more level communication playing field; and how far voters appear to be responding to their efforts, as well as addressing more general questions about the implications of these developments for party formation in the future. While we make reference to parties from a variety of national contexts, our account draws particularly on our experiences of observing the British parties’ efforts to harness the new media during the course of the past decade. Parties’ ability to sustain themselves financially and organisationally has come under increasing question in recent years as levels of membership have fallen and levels of partisan identification and support in the wider electorate have declined (Dalton and Wattenberg 2002; Mair and van Biezen 2004; Seyd and Whiteley 2004; Heidar and Saglie 2003). While some observers appear to have abandoned all hope that parties can be ‘resuscitated’ (Rawnsley 2006: 25; and see Wilson 2006), others have issued increasingly insistent calls for reform and renewal. Parties, along with legislatures and government bureaucracies, are urged to seek new ways to reconnect with their civic and local roots and revive themselves as agents of democracy for the twenty-first century (Alexander and Creasy 2006; Cruddas and Harris 2007). Among the modernisation options being considered, new ICTs feature increasingly heavily. For instance, a recent report issued by Demos, a leading British think-tank, called for

NEW MEDIA AND THE REVITALISATION OF POLITICS

This article considers whether the new media can provide a basis for reinvigorating one of the more established arenas of conventional politics – the election campaign. To do so we draw on the web campaigning efforts of Barack Obama during the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election and consider how far such techniques can ‘travel’ outside of the American election context. To understand what lay at the heart of Obama’s successful use of the new media in 2008 we introduce the idea of ‘citizen‐campaigner’ as a new form of web‐enabled voter activism. The prospects for citizen‐campaigning to take hold in other countries are assessed and a number of institutional and structural barriers identified. Conclusions focus on the likely import of such techniques in the upcoming UK General election of 2010.