Parties, Candidates and Citizens On-Line - Åbo Akademi

Contents of party websites
Focus is now turned to the findings concerning the contents of the Finnish parties’
websites. The descriptive findings of the website content analysis are firstly presented
after which the finding of a cluster analysis based on the findings is presented. The scores
for the website content indexes are presented in Table 4.
Table 4. Contents of the Finnish parties’ websites: index scores
Party
Internal
administration &
information
(0-23p)
Campaigning
& General
information
(0-19p)
Participation &
Bottom-up
communication
(0-13p)
Presentation
&
Sophistication
(0-33p)
Social Democratic Party 19 11 6 22
Centre Party 18 17 8 20
National Coalition Party 18 14 8 20
Swedish People's Party 14 12 4 12
Christian Democrats 19 14 11 19
Green League 18 13 11 12
Left-Wing Alliance 14 13 6 17
True Finns 12 14 7 18
Alternative People 5 10 4 9
Union of free Finland 13 4 2 9
Liberals 13 4 5 7
For the Poor 4 1 4 2
Finnish People's Blue-whites 9 4 2 6
Communist Party of Finland 16 9 5 11
Communist Worker's Party 8 2 2 7
Mean: 13.33 9.47
5.67 12.73
The results in Table 4 show that, on average, the Finnish parties’ websites focus slightly
more on internal administration and information than on the other areas. Expressed as
percentages of the maximum total, the mean, 13.33, for the internal administration and
information index reaches 58%. The means for campaigning and general information
[9.47] and participation and bottom-up communication [5.67] are around half of the total
maximum [50% and 44% respectively]. The presentation and sophistication mean score
[12.73] reaches 39% of the possible total score for the index. Thus, in general, the Finnish
parties appear to use their websites for internal administration and different types of
information, i.e. internal information and campaign related general information. Some
specific party scores do, however, merit some special attention. Firstly, the Green League
was one of two parties scoring highly on the participation and bottom-up index. The
party’s egalitarian organizational structure could be one explanation for these findings
(Nousiainen 1998, 89; Römmele 2003, 15; Zilliacus 2001, 39). Secondly, all three major
parties, i.e. the SDP, Centre and NCP, scored the highest on the presentation and
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