Parties, Candidates and Citizens On-Line - Åbo Akademi

To further examine the central components of on-line political environments and to empirically assess the
ways, if any, on-line politics could come to affect the politics of representative democracies. That is, to
examine whether the on-line activity of political actors shows signs of equalization or normalization and
the activity of citizens shows signs of either mobilization or reinforcement.
This thesis seeks to address this purpose mainly through an empirical assessment of the
on-line political environment in Finland (the choice of country will be further discussed in
the next section). In order to fulfill this purpose, there is a need to address several
research problems concerning on-line politics in Finland and the dimensions – the
political actors and the citizens – of the Finnish on-line political environment. Specifically,
drawing on the existing scholarly discussion on normalization and equalization, two
aspects which need to be addressed can be identified (cf. Margolis & Resnick 2000, 53-76;
Margolis et al. 2003, 58). Firstly, the potential differences in the on-line presence of
different political actors, and, secondly, the sophistication of the political actors’ websites.
Similarly, the scholarly discussion concerning the mobilization and reinforcement theories
turns the empirical attention towards what citizens are doing on-line and whether political
activity on-line is in any way serving to politically inform, activate or engage citizens (cf.
Norris 2001b, 218-219). An array of empirical research questions is central in fulfilling the
purpose of the thesis: who are the on-line political actors in Finland, what are they
communicating, what conditions influence this communication, what impact does on-line
politics have on Finnish citizens, and finally, what are Finnish citizens doing on-line 1?
3.2 The case of Finland
The empirical focus on Finland rests on two validations which make the country a most
interesting and relevant case for a study of on-line politics and on-line political
environments. The country is technologically developed and the off-line political
environment contains elements which make the country’s on-line political environment
interesting to explore. The basis of these validations is further presented in the following
paragraphs.
First and foremost, Finland has a relatively long history of a high level of internet
penetration. The country was among the world leaders already in 1999 (Norris 2000), and
1 At first glance, these questions bear some resemblance to the traditional communications formula
presented by Laswell (1948; cf. Braddock 1958): who says what in which channel under which
circumstances with what purposes to whom and with what effects. However, the questions used in this
thesis have only loosely been inspired by this traditional formula, they are not otherwise influenced by the
logic of the traditional formula. Rather, they are empirical elements necessary for the purpose of this
thesis.
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