SECTION 1: CONCEPTUALIZING AND DESIGNING THE PROJECT
Chapter 1 Introducing the Internet and Elections Project Nicholas W. Jankowski, Randolph Kluver, Kirsten A. Foot & Steven M. Schneider
Since development of the internet, large sectors of the public - scholars, politicians, journalists, activists - have debated the relation between this “network of networks” and political life. That debate has not abated in the short, two-decade history of the internet, but the original questions have been refined and the accumulated evidence has led to more nuanced understanding. This book reflects the concerted contribution to that debate by a group of social scientists who collaborated in an international comparative empirical research initiative, entitled the Internet and Elections Project. The participants in that initiative pooled their investigative resources to study one facet of the internet and political life: how a wide range of political actors in diverse countries around the world engaged the web during national elections in 2004-5. This book represents findings from 14 case studies of the web in national elections, and an overarching comparative analysis. This chapter sets the stage of the project: its inception and organization, and its theoretical concerns. By way of introduction to the individual contributions, the organizing principles of the book are outlined and salient findings from the chapters highlighted.
Chapter 2 The Internet and Elections Project Research Design Meghan Dougherty & Kirsten A. Foot
The Internet & Elections (IE) project employed the concept of political culture including the assumptions, values, beliefs, and institutional context in which political activity occurs within the political sphere of a nation (Kluver 2005). Project coordinators trained participating researchers in the conceptual and operational definitions of political culture. The coordinators asked participants to draw upon political culture in providing an explanatory mechanism in areas such as regulation of political speech, the assumptions concerning the appropriate use and role of political media, and the unique assumptions and values regarding politics in each country. These insights could then be used to inform the analysis of feature variance across spheres, should any emerge. However, “political culture” is not easily reduced to a set of factors that will surface consistently across many different nations. As a result, the Internet and Elections Project attempted to demonstrate the role of political culture in the deployment of the internet, with a full awareness of the difficulties of making generalizable claims.
SECTION 2: POLITICAL ACTORS AS WEB PRODUCERS <Back to top>
Chapter 3 Finland: The European Parliament Election in a Candidate-Centered Electoral System
Tom Carlson & Kim StrandbergIn examining electoral Web spheres during the 2004 European Parliament (EP) elections, two circumstances make the Finnish case interesting. First, the basic prerequisite for using the Web during elections - a high level of Internet penetration - was achieved relatively early in Finland. Already in 1999, Scandinavia, including Finland, was the most “wired” area in Europe (Norris 2000). In spring 2004, the highest levels of Internet usage by individuals in the EU were recorded in Sweden (82%), Denmark (76%) and Finland (70%) (Eurostat 2005). Second, as compared with other European countries, the Finnish electoral system is strongly oriented towards individual political candidates (CVCE 2004). In both national and EP elections, Finnish voters do not cast ballots according to lists of candidates but for unranked individual candidates representing parties or electoral alliances. This system leads to candidate-driven campaigning. Thus, Finnish candidates invest in personal campaigns and usually have their own support groups that organize campaigning activities, raise money, and generate publicity. This candidate-centered model of campaigning makes Finland a case apart in EP elections. Given these aspects, it is not surprising that 28 percent of the Finnish candidates had independent Web sites as early as the 1996 EP elections (Isotalus 1998). Since candidate-centered systems, as Gibson (2004) suggests, result in individualized cyber-campaigning spurring innovations and dynamic development in Web use, the early adoption of the Web in Finnish EP campaigns makes the Finnish case especially interesting. Candidates, as well as other actors, were probably “learning the ropes” in the 1996 campaign; we might expect their use of the Web during the 2004 EP elections to have undergone considerable change.
Chapter 4 The Netherlands: Party and Candidate Web Sites during the 2004 European Parliament Election Campaign
Renée van Os, Carlo Hagemann, Gerrit Voerman & Nicholas W. JankowskiIn election campaigns held in the Netherlands since the 1960s and before the “Age of the Internet,” television served as the primary campaigning vehicle for political parties and candidates. Inasmuch as television programming involves news personalities “whom viewers can see, like and trust,” scholars believe this medium has stimulated the rise of personality-centered politics (Gunther & Mughan 2000: 21). By increasingly focusing on politicians and reducing political content to short video clips and sound bites, television has been criticized for contributing to the simplification of politics (Pels 2003). The emergence of the Internet, however, has fostered hopes for a new type of politics based on abundant information, rational deliberation, and active participation (Rash 1997, Selnow 1998). Campaign activities on the web, it was argued, would be able to address the substantive issues of elections to a greater degree than has been possible on television. Various authors address aspects of this expectation and the related transformation in political campaign strategies in the Netherlands (see, for example, Kleinnijenhuis, Oegema, De Ridder & Ruigrok 1998; Tops, Voerman & Boogers 2000). During Dutch national election campaigns in 1998, 2002 and 2003, this transformation seemed well underway. Most political parties had developed special web sites for party leaders, along with party-oriented sites. In addition, many candidates constructed their own web sites (Voerman 2000,Voerman & Boogers 2005).
Chapter 5 Slovenian Online Campaigning during the 2004 European Parliament Election: Struggling Between Self-promotion and Mobilization
Tanja Oblak and Katja ŽeljanMore than any other communication media, the internet as a new communication technology holds promise to enhance democracy and change traditional one-way processes of political communication. To some, the political role of this new communication tool is considered a “great transformation” (Grossman 1995: 149) enabling citizens to search for relevant political information, to contact government officials, and to exchange views on political topics; it also stimulates participation in the political arena and facilitates voting. Klein calls the internet “a powerful technology for grassroots democracy,” which, “by facilitating discussion and collective action by citizens, strengthens democracy” (quoted in Davis 1999: 20). Moreover, Schwartz (quoted in Davis 1999: 20) refers to the internet as “the most powerful tool for political organizing developed in the past fifty years.”
Chapter 6 The Consequence of e-Excellence: Party Web Sites in the Czech Campaign for the 2004 European Parliament
Martin GregorEuropean Parliamentary elections are generally not approached with genuine interest, and the role of on-line campaigns therein may strike some (not least academics) as even less intriguing. The use of the Internet in European electoral campaigns has, in fact, been referred to as “a second-order medium in a second-order election” (Carlson & Stranberg 2005; p. 201). The Czech campaign leading to the 2004 European elections underscored the lack of engagement: Voter turnout of 27.9 percent proved significantly below the European Union average of 48.2 percent, and related web-based campaigning took place here in an environment where experience with such online campaigning was virtually non-existent.
Chapter 7
Online Structure for Political Action in the 2004 U.S. Congressional Electoral Web Sphere
The use of the web in U.S. congressional elections has grown dramatically in each campaign cycle since the first election-oriented web sites appeared in 1994. The percent of congressional candidates with web sites produced by their campaign organizations dedicated to promoting their candidacy has increased in the past decade, to the point that 71% of Senate campaigns and 68% of House campaigns produced Web sites in 2004 (Howard, 2006). The rise of candidate-centered campaign structures in the U.S. paralleled the emergence of new communication media that allowed candidates to establish direct contact with prospective supporters (Schier, 2000). In addition, election-oriented web materials have been developed since 1994 by a wide range of actors such as political parties, the Federal Election Commission and other government bodies, news organizations, civic and advocacy groups, educational institutions, and individual citizens. Of course, the adoption and strategic use of information and communication technologies by political actors precedes the digital era. In some respects, the history of campaigning could be understood as the diffusion of technology into the political sphere; within the U.S., there has been tight interlinking between advances in communication technologies and the practices of political communication (Abramson, Arterton, & Orren, 1988; Foot & Schneider, 2006).
SECTION 3: REACHING DIVERSE CONSTITUENCIES VIA THE WEB
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Chapter 8
Philippines: Poli-Clicking as Politicking. Online Campaigning and Civic Action in the 2004 National Election
New media technologies are transforming political campaigns across the globe (Gibson & Ward 2001; Norris 2001). Recent studies on politics and new media, particularly the internet, present arguments that follow two overarching and opposing perspectives. Norris (2003) presents these two distinct views. On the one hand, “cyber-optimists” believe that as internet access spreads across nations and into societies, new opportunities are created for direct access to politically relevant information and for unmediated communication between the political organizations and the electorate (Norris 2003). For this group, the internet introduces changes in civic participation. On the other hand, non-believers, or “cyber-skeptics,” perceive the internet as simply reflecting and reinforcing - rather than transforming - the existing structural features of each country’s political system. For these skeptics, the internet enhances democratic action and participation only among those who are politically active by nature. The more able or powerful ones dominate the usage of the internet; the less able ones are put in (even) more isolation. The technology merely promulgates existing trends in politics. Thus, for these individuals, the internet is basically an extension of traditional media; it does not change people so much, but it rather allows them to do what they usually do and to do it better to some extent.
Chapter 9 The Internet in the 2004 Sri Lankan Election
Shyam Tekwani & Randolph KluverIn developed countries and vibrant democracies, it seems clear that the internet is increasingly playing a role in political processes and outcomes. In a number of countries, the internet has been used either as an effective campaign medium or as a vehicle for political mobilization of the populace. In Sri Lanka, however, the political context suggests that the findings of other studies might not be applicable. As a nation divided by years of civil war, and with a population that is generally unable to access the internet, Sri Lanka would seem to be an unlikely place to make a significant investment in developing an election-oriented web sphere. The purpose of this paper is to explore the Sri Lanka web sphere and to determine how the internet is deployed during an election campaign. According to Joshi (2004), Sri Lanka’s 2004 parliamentary elections saw the internet emerge as a tool for campaigning for the first time in in the country. Emails disseminating candidate and party information and canvassing for votes were widely circulated in the run up to the campaign. Our purpose is to determine the nature of this web sphere and the likely purposes of election-oriented web sites given the context of Sri Lanka’s political culture and the unique circumstances of the nation.
Chapter 10
Addressing Young People Online: The 2004 European Parliament Election Campaign and Political Youth Web Sites
Advances in technology can enable a restructuring of the political system. Political actors can now use web sites to supply the original message that they want to present to citizens. With a unique combination of textual, auditory, and visual components, new technologies show the potential to present political and civic material to citizens. For example, online content allows for possible interaction between the sender and receiver, provides an inexpensive means of supplying large quantities of information, and offers many forms of communication that both political elites and citizens can use. According to Norris (2003a), the Internet can be viewed as a channel of interactive communication in that it furnishes a vital connection between citizens and government. Government information and services can be delivered “downwards” to citizens; citizens can provide feedback “upwards” to government.
Chapter 11
Two Indias: The Role of the Internet in the 2004 National Election
Politics and popular culture have long been intertwined in Indian public life and in its elections. The internet and new media technology add another dimension to this complex yet commonplace interaction. In the 2004 election, the rapid diffusion of information technology was incorporated into the normally raucous political environment in ways that reflected the unique characteristics of Indian political culture, both in terms of the artifacts of campaigns, as well as in the deep and abiding persistence of the divide between rich and poor in India. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the characteristics of the Indian electoral web sphere for the 2004 election, and the ways in which the rise of the internet as a campaign device reflected and reinforced these aspects of India’s political culture.
SECTION 4: POLITICAL CULTURE AND THE DIFFUSION OF TECHNOLOGIES
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Chapter 12
Web-based Citizen Engagement in the 2004 Australian Federal Election
Studies on the use of internet in the Australian political arena indicate that the site producer, rather than the user, is the benefactor of internet technology. Traditionally, the use of the internet in Australian state and territory elections has been, in the words of Gibson and Ward “top-down information provision” (2003: 140). Political web sites were primarily an “adjunct to existing communication devices,” offering limited interactive experiences (2003: 140-141). During the 2004 Australian federal election, however, this study reveals that political web sites were as likely to provide features facilitating public engagement as they were to provide political information, suggesting that the internet is closing the gap on what Putman (2000) calls the “civic deficit.”
Chapter 13 Hungary: Political Strategies and Citizen Tactics in the 2004 European Parliament Elections
Endre Dányi & Anna GaláczThe socio-political transformation induced by the political changes of 1989-1990 in Central and Eastern Europe coincided with a communication revolution characterized by the appearance and increasing use of new information and communications technologies (ICTs), such as personal computers, interactive television, mobile phones and the internet (Haddon 2004, Dutton 1996). Most political sociologists would agree that political change and changing communication practices cannot be analyzed independently of each other (Benhabib 1996). Hence, if one wants to understand how democracy works in practice in Central and Eastern Europe, the political uses of new communication technologies are certainly among the most salient objects of scientific inquiry. Election campaigns are particularly good opportunities for examining the political roles of new media - partly because on these occasions both politicians and campaign advisers get to experiment with a set of campaign techniques. However, it is also important to note that this relationship is reciprocal: the reception of subsequent campaign techniques shapes the way political players will think about campaigning itself in the future.
Chapter 14 Internet Deployment in the 2004 Indonesian Presidential Elections Shahiraa Sahul HameedThe beginning of the 21st century was a time of political change in the Southeast Asian region. In 2004, national elections were called in a number of Southeast Asian nations, including the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia. Most of these elections were fiercely contested and held both national and regional implications. In Indonesia, the Presidential election was significant not only for the role of president, but the election was seen as an initial step towards establishing a “true” democracy, as it was the first time that Indonesians were allowed to vote directly for their president and vice-president.
Chapter 15 Roles and Regulations: Boundaries on the Japanese Web Sphere in the 2004 Upper House Election Leslie M. Tkach-KawasakiThis chapter examines how traditional campaign roles and regulations - two mutually supporting aspects of a nation’s political culture - contributed to shaping the Japanese political web sphere, and political actors’ use of the web, during the 2004 Upper House election campaign period. Japan is distinctive because it is one of the few nations that regulates the use of the internet in political campaigns.
Chapter 16 Web Sphere Analysis for Political Web Sites: The 2004 National Assembly Election in South Korea
Hyo Kim & Han Woo ParkAs information technology has spread, politicians and political parties have used the internet to interact with their current and potential supporters (Abramson & Arterton 1988; Davis 1999). The power of the internet to increase support has become so important that the internet is now actively used in producing, archiving, and disseminating political information for issues and agendas that had been traditionally alienated or even abandoned by previous campaigns (McCaughy & Ayers 2003). Especially during election periods, the internet takes on an important role as a means of managing public relations by campaign managers and politicians, and raising issues by NGOs and common citizens (Benoit & Benoit 2000; Foot, Schneider, Dougherty, Xenos, & Larsen 2003; Schneider & Foot 2003).
SECTION 5: COMPARISONS AND CONCLUSIONS
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Chapter 17 Comparing Web Production
Practices across Electoral Web Spheres
Each of the election-specific chapters in this volume provides a valuable lens on the use of the web by various political actors within a particular electoral web sphere. Considered together, they provide a mosaic of insights into a range of issues concerning the web in elections. The Internet and Elections project was designed to facilitate the collection of comparable data on a few aspects of the web in elections, as well as to enable each nationally based group of investigators to pose questions of interest to them in dialogue with others internationally. This chapter draws on data from 19 of the national electoral web spheres that were studied in the context of the Internet and Elections Project to investigate questions regarding cross-national aspects of the web in elections.
Chapter 18 Project Conclusions & Proposals for Continued Research
Steven M. Schneider, Randolph Kluver, Kirsten A. Foot & Nicholas W. JankowskiThe confluence of two distinct forces contributed to initiation of the Internet and Elections Project. First, the emergence of the internet as a significant tool for electoral activities worldwide - derived, in part, from the proliferation of campaign web sites in the United States during the 2000 and 2002 elections - stimulated questions concerning the relationship between political culture and internet activity. And second, the large number of national elections scheduled in 2004-5 offered the social science equivalent of the “perfect storm.” This last aspect allowed us to hold the time factor relatively constant and provided opportunity to conduct comparative research across distinct political cultures. Our overall objective was to understand the relation between the web and electoral politics during the 2004-5 election cycle on a global scale. This meant, on the one hand, broadening the scope of study through inclusion of countries from around the world and, at the same time, narrowing the range of research questions in order to provide an intensive, systematic snapshot of the political web within a demarcated period in time.
