Parties, Candidates and Citizens On-Line - Åbo Akademi

(cf. Strom 1990, 570), and consequently, the findings are quite difficult to interpret. Even
though all three Finnish parties competing for the main part of all votes in modern
Finnish elections (cf. Moring 2003; Nousiainen 1998, 49), i.e. the SDP, Centre and NCP,
are contained within cluster I, the parties in cluster I are quite varied in terms of their
other party goals. The major parties also have an office-seeking agenda (Sundberg 1996,
16). The SPP is often included in the Finnish governmental cartel but is also a policy
advocating minority party (Nousiainen 1998, 34-35; Sundberg 1996, 16). The Greens and
the LWA both emphasize goals on the internal arena (Nousiainen 1998, 78, 89; Zilliacus
2001, 50-51). Again, concerning the parties in cluster II, there is little scholarly knowledge
of their general goals. Tentatively though, the agendas of these parties appear very
different, ranging from policy-advocating parties (Alternative People, Union of free
Finland; For the Poor, Finnish People’s Blue-whites) to parties focusing more on the
internal arena (CPF and CWP).
In sum, relating to the two party clusters found concerning the contents of the
Finnish parties’ websites, party size and resources seems to be related to higher index
scores. Again, as for the cluster found from the party questionnaire, certain specific party
website scores also seem explainable in light of other theoretical circumstances – such as
the Green League scoring relatively highly on participation and the CPF emphasizing
internal communication – but, in general, party size seems to have the most evident
influence on the Finnish parties’ website contents.
Summary of descriptive findings
The findings concerning the descriptive research questions are summarized in this
section. The study’s main explorative questions are therafter examined in the concluding
section.
Regarding the first descriptive research question – what are the Finnish parties’
opinions concerning the importance and use of their website? – some of the findings
merit attention here. Firstly, in general, the Finnish parties do not appear to have a high
degree of central planning of their websites, nor employ large amounts of internal or
external personnel in maintaining the sites. Many parties stated that the local branches
were responsible for several sections of their websites and that the people working with
their website have other more important responsibilities. Secondly, the Finnish parties
nonetheless perceive their website to be an important communication tool compared to
traditional communication channels. Surprisingly, though, some fringe parties ranked the
website lower than traditional communication channels (cf. Gibson et al. 2003b, 102).
The Finnish parties’ general opinion of political websites was also positive. Most of the
party information officials felt that there are more advantages than drawbacks with having
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