Parties, Candidates and Citizens On-Line - Åbo Akademi

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of user preferences. If internet politics is ‘preaching to the converted’, the activity on the political forum ought to be lower than on its non-political counterpart. The research method of this study is quantitative. The activity on all selected discussion boards was examined through the ‘discussion threads’. A thread is constructed as a network of messages concerning the same topic, posted to a discussion board. In essence, a thread is a written transcript of the electronic debate. The threads can consist of different numbers of messages on different levels of the debate. Hence, some messages are replies to the thread’s initiating message while others are replies to other replies. Each discussion thread was coded for length (number of individual messages in thread), depth (number of discussion levels, i.e. the extent of replies to replies) and debaters (the number of citizens participating in the thread). However, whether a quantitative method is the most appropriate method for answering the research questions of the study is somewhat questionable. Hence, the validity of the findings and alternative methodological approaches are further discussed in the concluding section of the article. In order to analyze the data, several indices measuring the activity on the discussion boards were constructed. The coding procedure was divided into three time periods in order to answer research questions RQ3 and RQ3a. Thus, the activity on the forums was first coded in a period of ‘electoral peace’ between the 11 th March 2002 and 24 th March 2002 (this period is referred to as T1 in the rest of the paper). Secondly, the forums were revisited prior to the Finnish parliamentary election 8 between the 3 rd of March 2003 and the 16 th of March 2003 (referred to as T2 henceforth). Finally, the activity on the forums was coded between the 26 th of May 2003 and the 8 th of June 2003 (Henceforth T3), in order to control for eventual election-effects in the previous time period (T2) and to provide a wider picture of longitudinal development of the electronic debates in Finland. The two boards on the web portal jippii.fi were only coded in the first coding period as the web portal has introduced registration of users since then. In coding the activity, a delay of two days 9 was applied in order to allow the debates to develop. 4. Findings 4.1. Activity on the discussion boards In total, 2,847 discussion threads were coded during the three coding periods. A comparison of the activity on the different discussion forums reveals that the activity on the board of the National Coalition Party (NCP) dominated the total activity. Table 1 pictures the spread of discussion threads. 153
Table 1. The distribution (number and share) of discussion threads for the partyassociated discussion boards at all coding periods Coding period Discussion board T1 T2 T3 Total N % N % N % N % Centre Party 34 6.6 % 227 15.0 % 113 13.8 % 374 11.8 % CP member 0 0.0 % 18 1.2 % 19 2.3 % 37 1.2 % NCP 412 79.4 % 1132 75.0 % 600 73.3 % 2144 75.9 % Green League 73 14.1 % 132 8.7 % 87 10.6 % 292 11.1 % Total: 519 100 % 1509 100 % 819 100 % 2847 100 % At all time periods, the activity was highest on the NCP board. In all, the total activity was highest during the second coding period (T2) prior to the parliamentary election. This might possibly be due to the increased off-line political activity in general, including meta campaigning by the parties (Asp, 1986: 108; Carlson and Djupsund, 2001: 85). The marginal activity on the restricted member-forum of the Centre Party (CP) is also noteworthy. The spread of the discussion threads points at quite a significant amount of debates on certain discussion boards. In the following, the quality of the discussions on the forums is further examined. 4.2. Liveliness and intensity According to Barber (1984: 178), strong democratic conversation always requires debates with continuous exchanges of ideas, thoughts and views. It involves listening as well as talking. Thus, the discussions are required to be both lively and intense. In the following section these two aspects of the Finnish discussion boards are fleshed out. Bentivegna (1998: 5) measures debate liveliness by the relationship between the first, original message of the thread and the follow-up replies. The measure is calculated according to the following formula: 1-(O/Σm) where O = the original message Σm = the total number of messages in each discussion thread. Hence, the better the liveliness in the debate, the closer to 1 will be the value of the measure. In Table 2 below, the liveliness of the Finnish discussion boards, associated with a political party, is depicted using the measure suggested by Bentivegna. 154
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Kim Strandberg Studies of Politics
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PARTIES, CANDIDATES AND CITIZENS ON
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CIP Cataloguing in Publication Stra
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Jag vill även ta tillfället i akt
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C. Summary & Conclusions ..........
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List of tables Article I: Table 1.
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A. Introduction
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26; Römmele 2003, 9-11). Therefore
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these scholarly visions (e.g. Corra
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2003b; Gibson & Ward 2002). Regardi
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Some further comments regarding the
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for citizens’ participation and p
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providing the kind of structure for
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To further examine the central comp
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Scholars have noted that some of th
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• In the third article (Strandber
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References Barber, B. 1984. Strong
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Lusoli, W. 2005b. “The Internet a
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B. The articles
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Introduction Two specific theories
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proportional systems. It is therefo
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egulation of political advertising
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Because the study is case-oriented
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the discussion of the variable, the
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Table 1. Operationalizations of the
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There were no contradicting cases f
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dramatically if a different coding
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of democratic status and the usage
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References Altheide, D. & Snow, R.
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Norris, P. (2003) ‘Preaching to t
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Appendix B: studies associated with
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ABdE+AbdE = AdE BCdE+BcdE = BdE Fin
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1. Introduction Voter turnout in th
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integration [9,10]. A study by Tiil
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3. Data and methodology Our focus o
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provided the bulk of the sites and,
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YLE, the state-owned Finnish Broadc
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4.4. The on-line candidates: a clos
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4.4.3. What kind of candidates did
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sources during the campaign. The qu
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The results presented hitherto are
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ecome involved in their campaigns.
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References [1] H. Schmitt, The Euro
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Appendix A. Abbreviated coding temp
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Introduction Party communication ha
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pursuit of executive office, policy
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2001, 30; Pedersen & Saglie 2005, 3
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and efforts into using the web for
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finally, engaging communication 3.
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Finally, concerning the informative
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Nousiainen 1998, 55-59; Sundberg 19
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sophistication index. These parties
Page 111 and 112: (cf. Strom 1990, 570), and conseque
Page 113 and 114: identified two groups of parties on
Page 115 and 116: Notes: 1 As of November 16th 2005,
Page 117 and 118: Kitchelt, H. 2001. ‘Partisan Comp
Page 119 and 120: Appendix: Questionnaire scales Labo
Page 121 and 122: Targeting of specific voter segment
Page 124 and 125: Article IV On-line Campaigning - An
Page 126 and 127: Patterns of candidate on-line elect
Page 128 and 129: elements of interest pluralism (cf.
Page 130 and 131: The Finnish context As was briefly
Page 132 and 133: RQ1: How much predicting power do i
Page 134 and 135: stored locally two weeks prior to t
Page 136 and 137: Table 2. Logistical regression mode
Page 138 and 139: Table 4. Candidate website function
Page 140 and 141: Table 5. OLS multiple regression mo
Page 142 and 143: Table 6. OLS multiple regression mo
Page 144 and 145: affiliated party, even in the candi
Page 146 and 147: than their rivals (Margolis et al.
Page 148 and 149: References Altheide, David and Robe
Page 150 and 151: Norris, Pippa (2001a) A Virtuous Ci
Page 152 and 153: Campaigning Additive index: 1 point
Page 154 and 155: Article V “Town Hall” Meetings
Page 156 and 157: Hence, one must question whether th
Page 158 and 159: (Coleman and Goetze, 2001: 16; Norr
Page 160 and 161: Barber mentions that it is only whe
Page 164 and 165: Table 2. Average degree of liveline
Page 166 and 167: 5. Citizen Participation in the deb
Page 168 and 169: Over time, there is also a slight,
Page 170 and 171: would significantly enhance our und
Page 172 and 173: Notes 1 According to the Nua Intern
Page 174: Kamarck, E. 1999. ”Campaigning on
Page 178 and 179: C. Summary and conclusions A discus
Page 180 and 181: perspective, the articles have been
Page 182 and 183: predicting candidate website functi
Page 184 and 185: articles in the thesis. In general,
Page 186 and 187: Finnish voters’ propensity to loo
Page 188 and 189: they did not appear to “become mo
Page 190 and 191: organizational, financial […] res
Page 192 and 193: The real impact of internet politic
Page 194 and 195: Norris, P. 2003. “Preaching to th
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