Parties, Candidates and Citizens On-Line - Åbo Akademi

spur innovative and lively on-line activity beyond the major parties and candidates (cf.
Cunha et al. 2003, 70; Gibson 2004; Norris 2003). Among these, both the fragmented
multiparty system (Raunio 2002), the open media environment (Moring 1995) as well as
the campaign culture which stresses the role of the individual candidates (Ruostetsaari &
Mattila 2002), was mentioned in the introduction to the thesis. Regardless of these, the
findings of the articles indicate that the on-line political environment in Finland could
tentatively be described by the prediction of Margolis and Resnick (2000, 74):
“mainstream politics are likely to dominate the WWW”.
2.1.2. What the political actors are doing with their websites
The websites of the Finnish parties prior to the 2006 Presidential election were analyzed
in the third of this thesis’ articles (Strandberg 2007). Concerning websites, both the topdown
and bottom-up communication potential of the internet was stressed in the
introduction to the thesis. Additionally, as mentioned, Finland’s internet penetration rate
and several contextual features were argued to be favourable to a dynamic and innovative
use of political websites. The findings of the third article generally showed that the
Finnish parties did not make full use of the internet’s potential, and mainly used their
websites for top-down information dissemination. These findings are quite similar to
those reported in other countries (e.g. Kamarck 1999). It appears as if the Finnish actors
mainly use the internet to supplement other forms of campaigning. The parties focused
on internal information and general campaign information. They provided website users
with few opportunities for bottom-up communication. The article also yielded an
interesting result pertaining to the theories of normalization and equalization; compared
to parties outside the parliament, the parties in parliament provided significantly more
internal and external information, and more opportunities for user participation, in a
more sophisticated website package. Thus, as Finnish parties, to a significant degree,
receive organizational funding based on their share of the seats in parliament (Nousiainen
1998, 72-73), this arguably gives support to the normalization theory (cf. Margolis &
Resnick 2000, 16; Margolis et al. 2003, 58). The Finnish parties with more resources are
edging in front of those with fewer resources, both on- and off-line.
Corresponding findings were brought to attention in the fourth article focusing on
the Finnish candidates’ campaign websites prior to the 2003 Parliamentary elections
(Strandberg 2006a). The candidates primarily used their websites for top-down
information dissemination and for networking through hyperlinks, but not for promoting
user participation. In spite of the rather individualistic campaign culture (cf. Gibson
2004), few candidates made extensive use of the opportunities the medium provides. The
article also gave support to the normalization theory. Two separate regression models
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