Parties, Candidates and Citizens On-Line - Åbo Akademi

Introduction
“A seeming beneficiary of internet-based campaigning would be the resourcepoor
candidate. Since, theoretically, access to all candidates’ sites by the user is
on an equal footing, and the cost for posting a home page is minimal, the
internet would appear to have the potential of serving as an equalizing
medium for all candidates, both major and minor parties, both well known and
obscure” (Davis 1999: 89)
Political communication experienced significant changes during the 20th century. Two
noticeable changes for political parties and candidates were the decline in voter
partisanship (Dalton 2000) accompanied by increasing dependence on the media when
communicating campaign messages to the public (Blumler & Gurevitch 1995). The
traditional ties between voter and party have significantly eroded (Dalton 2000; Swanson
& Mancini 1996b: 7-12). As a result, instead of simply mobilizing partisan voters, political
parties and candidates are required to ‘catch’ all segments of voters in order to secure
electoral success (cf. Wattenberg 2000). The most efficient way to communicate a
campaign message to the masses is through media, therefore resulting in a ‘key’ role for
mass media in modern political communication (Swanson & Mancini 1996a: 251).
In the modern media system (see Norris 2001a: 147-9) political actors find
themselves in the hands of reporters and editors who serve as filters between them and
the public (Blumler & Gurevitch 1995: 3). This editorial process usually follows
commercialized media logic (Altheide & Snow 1991). This trend has been especially
troublesome for certain political actors. Fringe parties and candidates often fail to break
the news threshold (Margolis et al. 2003) and lack financial resources to attain public
awareness through other channels, for instance via paid TV-advertisements (Carlson
2000: 19). It comes as no surprise, then, that the advent of the internet was looked upon
with great enthusiasm by most political actors (Bimber & Davis 2003: 20). The internet is
cheap, interactive, enables fast and large quantities of information and multimedia
dissemination and provides political actors with a direct communication channel to the
electorate (Bimber & Davis 2003). Consequently, as compared to traditional media,
communicating via the internet could help the smaller parties to stay in stride with the
major parties in the electoral arena (see discussion in Margolis et al. 2003: 58; Norris 2003:
25). The major parties’ advantage in traditional media coverage and campaign budgets
could, however, eventually give them the upper hand on the internet (cf. Margolis &
Resnick 2000: 72-4).
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