Parties, Candidates and Citizens On-Line - Åbo Akademi

not alter the underlying party- and candidate goals but it does, however, provide the
political actors with an additional means of achieving them.
Several web-specific features – such as information volume, speed of information
dissemination, the ability to use more multimedia, interactivity and control of the
conveyed message – are symptomatic of this new communication media. Considering
both the goals of political actors and the specific features of the internet, Gibson and
Ward (2000: 304-6) perceive five functions to be central to the use of political websites
(cf. Römmele 2003); information provision which is enhanced through the volume and speed
of data transmission on-line, the internet also provides campaigning activities with the
added-value of multimedia, interactivity and control of information. Furthermore, resource
generation is facilitated through the interactive features of the web, thus enabling immediate
transactions and recruitment via e-mail. Additionally, the authors stress that networking online
is made easy by the hyperlink system inherent in the technology. Finally, citizen
participation could be eased through interactive feedback function and discussion boards.
In summary, the internet adds more tools in achieving party goals but does not alter the
underlying purposes of political activity.
The quality of a website’s delivery is also an important aspect of political websites.
This aspect concerns the quality and effectiveness of the political websites’ presentation
(cf. Cunha et al. 2003: 73-4). Gibson and Ward (2000: 308) use the term ‘sophistication’ in
describing this aspect. Features such as multimedia, images and frames all enhance the
overall experience of using a website. The delivery aspect is also important to consider
since many possible differences between candidates of major and minor parties might be
more visible in the delivery and sophistication of the websites than in the functions
(Gibson & Ward 2002: 107-8). Launching a website is relatively cheap, but maintaining,
updating and visually enhancing it requires more resources in terms of costly web
designers and managers. Such resources are usually readily available to the candidates of
major – not minor and fringe – parties (Margolis & Resnick 2000: 16).
Data & Methods
The data for the empirical analysis was collected prior to the Finnish parliamentary
election in March 2003. A total of 2,013 candidates ran for office, hence the size of the
research data should provide sufficient diversity in the study’s variables. In order to
analyze the first research question (RQ1), each candidate’s web presence was checked
using candidate listings on the parties’ websites. Web presence was double-checked using
internet search engines (google.fi and altavista.fi). A campaign website was defined as a
candidate site that clearly mentioned the upcoming election (cf. Ward & Gibson 2003:
194). A total of 874 sites were found using this definition 4. The sites were accessed and
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