Parties, Candidates and Citizens On-Line - Åbo Akademi

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Article II The 2004 European parliament election on the web: Finnish actor strategies and voter responses Tom Carlson & Kim Strandberg Published in Information Polity, vol. 10 – issue 3 &4 (2005) © IOS Press. Reproduced with permission.
1. Introduction Voter turnout in the 2004 European Parliament (EP) elections followed the downward trend experienced since the first direct elections in 1979. The all-time low turnout of 45.7 per cent suggested that the notion of the ‘second-order’ nature of EP elections was, by and large, still valid [1]. During recent years, different solutions have been suggested to raise European voters’ engagement with the EP elections. Typically, institutional factors have been taken into account, including electronic voting [2]. However, institutional reforms are probably not enough; voters must sense that the EP elections are relevant and important to their lives. This view strongly stresses the role of mobilizing agents and the role of the news media in communicating the campaign: whereas parties, candidates and different networks (e.g. labour unions and NGOs) act as mobilizing agencies through various forms of direct communications with voters and by using ‘paid media’, the news media serve their mobilizing function through providing election-oriented information to the electorate [3]. In the 2004 elections, these actors had the opportunity to utilize the internet, particularly the World Wide Web (henceforth, the web), to a greater extent and probably in more effective ways than in EP elections. The general purpose of this article is to empirically explore the role of the web in the Finnish 2004 EP election. Specifically, the article has two aims. The first aim is to explore how a wide range of actors relevant to the elections employed the web during the campaign. The second objective is to assess the impact of these actors’ web strategies on the voters. Hence, the focus is on both the supply side (what the actors provided on-line) and the demand side (how the voters responded to the actors’ web deployments). Two circumstances make the Finnish case interesting. First, the basic prerequisite for using the web during elections – a high level of internet penetration – was fulfilled early in Finland. Already in 1999, Scandinavia, including Finland, was the most ‘wired’ area in Europe [4]. In 2005, as to the internet penetration rate, Finland ranks fourth in the EU (62%) after Sweden (74%) Denmark (69%) and the Netherlands (66%). 1 Second, as compared with other European countries, the Finnish electoral system strongly emphasizes the individual candidates. In both national and EP elections, Finnish voters do not express a list preference, but they cast a vote for individual candidates representing parties or electoral alliances [5]. This system results in candidate-driven campaigning. When considering these circumstances, it may not come as a surprise that 28 per cent of 1 Source: www.internetworldstats.com 62
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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
Page 19 and 20: 26; Römmele 2003, 9-11). Therefore
Page 21 and 22: these scholarly visions (e.g. Corra
Page 23 and 24: 2003b; Gibson & Ward 2002). Regardi
Page 25 and 26: Some further comments regarding the
Page 27 and 28: for citizens’ participation and p
Page 29 and 30: providing the kind of structure for
Page 31 and 32: To further examine the central comp
Page 33 and 34: Scholars have noted that some of th
Page 35 and 36: • In the third article (Strandber
Page 37 and 38: References Barber, B. 1984. Strong
Page 39 and 40: Lusoli, W. 2005b. “The Internet a
Page 42: B. The articles
Page 45 and 46: Introduction Two specific theories
Page 47 and 48: proportional systems. It is therefo
Page 49 and 50: egulation of political advertising
Page 51 and 52: Because the study is case-oriented
Page 53 and 54: the discussion of the variable, the
Page 55 and 56: Table 1. Operationalizations of the
Page 57 and 58: There were no contradicting cases f
Page 59 and 60: dramatically if a different coding
Page 61 and 62: of democratic status and the usage
Page 63 and 64: References Altheide, D. & Snow, R.
Page 65 and 66: Norris, P. (2003) ‘Preaching to t
Page 67 and 68: Appendix B: studies associated with
Page 69: ABdE+AbdE = AdE BCdE+BcdE = BdE Fin
Page 73 and 74: integration [9,10]. A study by Tiil
Page 75 and 76: 3. Data and methodology Our focus o
Page 77 and 78: provided the bulk of the sites and,
Page 79 and 80: YLE, the state-owned Finnish Broadc
Page 81 and 82: 4.4. The on-line candidates: a clos
Page 83 and 84: 4.4.3. What kind of candidates did
Page 85 and 86: sources during the campaign. The qu
Page 87 and 88: The results presented hitherto are
Page 89 and 90: ecome involved in their campaigns.
Page 91 and 92: References [1] H. Schmitt, The Euro
Page 93 and 94: Appendix A. Abbreviated coding temp
Page 95 and 96: Introduction Party communication ha
Page 97 and 98: pursuit of executive office, policy
Page 99 and 100: 2001, 30; Pedersen & Saglie 2005, 3
Page 101 and 102: and efforts into using the web for
Page 103 and 104: finally, engaging communication 3.
Page 105 and 106: Finally, concerning the informative
Page 107 and 108: Nousiainen 1998, 55-59; Sundberg 19
Page 109 and 110: 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
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Targeting of specific voter segment
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Article IV On-line Campaigning - An
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Patterns of candidate on-line elect
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elements of interest pluralism (cf.
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The Finnish context As was briefly
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RQ1: How much predicting power do i
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stored locally two weeks prior to t
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Table 2. Logistical regression mode
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Table 4. Candidate website function
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Table 5. OLS multiple regression mo
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Table 6. OLS multiple regression mo
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affiliated party, even in the candi
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than their rivals (Margolis et al.
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References Altheide, David and Robe
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Norris, Pippa (2001a) A Virtuous Ci
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Campaigning Additive index: 1 point
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Article V “Town Hall” Meetings
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Hence, one must question whether th
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(Coleman and Goetze, 2001: 16; Norr
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Barber mentions that it is only whe
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of user preferences. If internet po
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Table 2. Average degree of liveline
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5. Citizen Participation in the deb
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Over time, there is also a slight,
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would significantly enhance our und
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Notes 1 According to the Nua Intern
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Kamarck, E. 1999. ”Campaigning on
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C. Summary and conclusions A discus
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perspective, the articles have been
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predicting candidate website functi
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articles in the thesis. In general,
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Finnish voters’ propensity to loo
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they did not appear to “become mo
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organizational, financial […] res
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The real impact of internet politic
Page 194 and 195:
Norris, P. 2003. “Preaching to th
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