Stephen Ward

1
Parties and the Virtual CampaignThe 2005
Election Online

• Stephen Ward Rachel Gibson
• Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford
• ACSPRI Centre, Australian National University

2
Research Themes

• Enhanced pluralism or normalisation?
• Professionalisation, decentralisation
  postmodern elections
• Extending participation engagement

3
2005 Great Expectations (Again)

• Technological factors - access doubled since 2001
  (52-60) Growth of broadband mobile phones
  Blogging and virals.
• Political factors - The 2004 US presidential
  campaigns (The Dean Phenomena)

4
Wherever we look it is clear that internet tools
like email, websites and chat are going to be
central to this election. It will happen at every
level and goes far beyond the national campaign
run by the national parties (Bill Thompson,
BBC Online,11 April 2004)
5
Party websites

• Function - Basic patterns same as 2001.
  Information provision resource generation
  increasingly the focus.
• Competition - Big three outperform all others on
  a range of measures. Gap slightly wider than
  2001. But some minor parties still competing
  effectively.

6
Research methods

• Focussed on 20 parties at national level (9
  parliamentary and 11 non-parliamentary)
• Presence and access data - google links BBC
  online news coverage sample of 200 constituency-
  assessing local level activity
• Website feature analysis - national level more
  basic local level surveys
• Interviews -party officials
• Public opinion data -NOP survey (n1972)

7
Local e-campaigning

• Large growth in candidate websites esp amongst
  large parties. Overall around 37 candidates had
  web presence.
• Greater activity in marginals incumbents more
  likely to be online levels of access to the net
  also important party matters (68 Conservative
  candidates had web presence).
• Growth of template politics.

8
The Public Response

• Around 30 of Internet users went online for
  election information (BBC online mainly)
• 12 received election information via email
• 3 visited national party sites 1 visited
  candidate sites
• Internet activists are the already politically
  engaged (students?)
• Online activity surrounding the election more
  than doubled on range of measures since 2001

9
Summary Conclusions

• Net not a level playing field - it widens rather
  than levels
• ICTs facilitating top-down localism rather than
  decentralisation
• ICTs exacerbating existing participation divides.
  Databases narrowing the focus?
• This is not America - the UK political system
  minimises the Internets usefulness