Parties, Candidates and Citizens On-Line - Åbo Akademi

Table 2. Average degree of liveliness for the party-associated discussion boards at all
coding periods
Coding period
Discussion board T1 a) T2 b) T3 c)
N Liveliness N Liveliness N Liveliness
X X X
Centre Party 34 0.36 227 0.48 113 0.50
CP member missing missing 18 0.22 19 0.32
NCP 412 0.75 1132 0.72 600 0.74
Green League d) 73 0.19 132 0.29 87 0.40
Total & average 519 0.57 1509 0.43 819 0.49
a) The differences between the discussion boards are significant F=143.771 (df=2) p=.000
b) The differences between the discussion boards are significant F=106.285 (df=3) p=.000
c) The differences between the discussion boards are significant F=47.238 (df=3) p=.000
d) The differences over time are significant for the Green League board F=6.154 (df=3) p=.000
For the other discussion boards, statistical significance was not achieved
Overall, the liveliness of the discussion forums is relatively weak; at best the average total
was only 0.57 (at T1) which in essence means that nearly half of all threads consist of only
two messages. However, the forum of the NCP shows a somewhat better liveliness than
the other party-associated forums. Through all coding periods, the green League’s (GL)
discussion board has the lowest liveliness, even though there is a statistically significant
increase over time. Likewise, the overall trend concerning all discussion boards, points at
a slight increase in liveliness, even though statistical significance was not achieved.
Nonetheless, it seems as though the debates on three out of four forums are very short.
The context prior to the 2003 election (T2) did not significantly alter the liveliness, even
though Table 1 revealed a high overall activity during that period.
The intensity of debates can be measured in several ways. Hill and Hughes (1998:
56), for instance, use the length of the thread as a measure of intensity. However, this
operationalization seems questionable as this measure does not capture the depth of the
debate. A long thread might nonetheless only consist of messages responding to the
original message and thus the intensity is quite limited. Instead, an intensive thread should
have messages responding to other replies and thus involve more citizens in the
discussion. Thus, intensity should be measured with a tool which combines both the
length of the thread and depth (number of levels of reply messages) of the thread.
Therefore, the intensity of debates is measured using the following formula;
Σm * Σl
where Σm = the total number of individual messages in the thread
Σl = the total number of reply-levels
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