Parties, Candidates and Citizens On-Line - Åbo Akademi
Parties, Candidates and Citizens On-Line - Åbo Akademi
Parties, Candidates and Citizens On-Line - Åbo Akademi
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The results presented hitherto are only a first step forward in examining the role of<br />
the election oriented information; we also need to know how the voters assessed the online<br />
information. Our analysis shows that few voters obtained very/quite much<br />
information to support their voting decision from party sites (6%), c<strong>and</strong>idate sites (9%)<br />
<strong>and</strong> c<strong>and</strong>idate selectors (14%). 11 A significantly larger share stressed the importance of the<br />
information in the newspapers (26%) <strong>and</strong> in television news <strong>and</strong> current affairs<br />
programmes (28%).<br />
What, then, characterizes the voters that attached great importance to the web<br />
sources? A regression analysis, not reported here for length reasons, showed largely<br />
similar patterns that were detected in Table 8. However, this time, gender proved not to<br />
be a significant predictor. Above all, the voters estimating that they obtained very/quite<br />
much information to support the voting decision from c<strong>and</strong>idates’ <strong>and</strong> parties’ sites <strong>and</strong><br />
c<strong>and</strong>idate selectors tend to have an over-representation of younger voters (18–34 years)<br />
<strong>and</strong> the ones living in urban contexts. Lastly, looking more closely at the age effect, Table<br />
9 shows to what extent different age groups estimated that they received very/quite much<br />
information to support the voting decision from party/c<strong>and</strong>idate sites <strong>and</strong> c<strong>and</strong>idate<br />
selectors compared to traditional media sources.<br />
TABLE 9. The importance attached to different sources by age groups.<br />
Source<br />
18–24<br />
Years<br />
25–34<br />
Years<br />
Age Groups<br />
35–49<br />
Years<br />
50–69 Years<br />
<strong>Parties</strong>’ Websites 33 % 12 % 5 % 2 %<br />
N (48) (174) (285) (403)<br />
<strong>C<strong>and</strong>idates</strong>’ Websites 38 % 17 % 7 % 4 %<br />
N (48) (175) (285) (405)<br />
Web-based C<strong>and</strong>idate selectors 43 % 25 % 15 % 5 %<br />
N (49) (174) (285) (403)<br />
Television News/Current Affairs<br />
Programmes<br />
31 % 33 % 22 % 29 %<br />
N (52) (178) (289) (409)<br />
Newspapers 27 % 23 % 23 % 30 %<br />
N (52) (178) (289) (409)<br />
Note: The figures are percentages of respondents that estimated that they obtained very/quite much<br />
information to support the voting decision from the source in question.<br />
11 <strong>On</strong>ly the respondents that reported that they had voted in the elections were asked to estimate the<br />
information value of different sources.<br />
78
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