Parties, Candidates and Citizens On-Line - Åbo Akademi

C. Summary and conclusions
A discussion concerning on-line political activity by political actors and citizens was
carried out in the introduction to this thesis. Drawing on that discussion, a theoretical
framework containing a typology of four on-line political environments in which these
two dimensions were considered in conjunction was also constructed. Building on this
framework, a purpose and five empirical research questions were constructed for the
thesis. The thesis’ construction consisting of five articles was perceived as having two
advantages: it ought to provide a “broad experience” of the phenomenon of interest, and
the findings of the individual parts should shed light on each other when analyzed as parts
of a common context (Moring 1989, 31-32). With these potential advantages in mind, the
findings of the individual studies will now be summarized and discussed in relation to the
empirical research questions, the theoretical framework and the typology of four on-line
political environments presented in the introduction. The Finnish case will first be
revisited in light of certain circumstances brought to attention by the thesis’ articles.
1. The Finnish case revisited
Studies which are mainly concerned with only one country have an apparent problem
according to Peters (1998, 5-6):
“the more an approach takes into account […] one political system […] the
less capable that research strategy will be of producing generalizations […]
The understanding developed through the extended analysis of the single
case becomes almost intuitive, so that conveying it to others may become
very difficult” (Peters 1998 5-6)
The Finnish case will now be revisited in order to position the thesis within a broader
context, and to address the problem of this ‘particularistic pitfall’. The discussion in this
section arguably bears some relevance to the “generalizability” of the thesis.
A meta-analysis of the research field concerning on-line electoral competition was
conducted in the first of the thesis’ articles (Strandberg 2006b). Specifically, scholarly
findings of either normalization or equalization were tested for logical dependence on
several contextual and one methodological variable. Four contextual variables, i.e. the
election system, the length of the country’s status as a democracy, the country’s human-
and technological development and the media environment, were considered as being
potentially influential on the findings of either normalization or equalization.
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