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A Net Gain?
Web 2.0 Campaigning in the Australian 2010 Election*
Rachel K. Gibson
Institute for Social Change
University of Manchester
Manchester M13 9PL
United Kingdom
Email: [email protected]
Ian McAllister
Research School of Social Sciences
Australian National University
Canberra, ACT 0200
Australia
E-mail: [email protected]
Paper prepared for presentation at the 2011 Annual Meeting of
the American Political Science Association, Seattle, WA.
* The 2001, 2004, 2007 and 2010 Australian Candidate Studies were collected
by Rachel Gibson, Ian McAllister, Clive Bean, David Gow and Juliet Pietsch
and funded by the Australian Research Council. The data are available from
the Australian Social Science Data Archive (http://assda.anu.edu.au).
2
Abstract
Systematic analysis of the uptake and impact of web campaigning has been
limited, particularly in the post-2004 social media era. Evidence from the web 1.0
period suggested that websites can make a difference to candidate support levels, but
that a pattern of normalization had become established, with mainstream parties and
candidates having a stronger online presence than their minor counterparts. The rise
of social media has renewed questions about the dominance of major parties online.
This paper uses data from four Australian Candidate Studies conducted between 2001
and 2010 to compare major and minor parties’ online campaign efforts, and to assess
their electoral impact in the most recent 2010 national election. The results show a
significantly greater uptake of web 2.0 applications among minor parties and a use of
personal home pages by major parties. While this may suggest some equalizing of
relations in digital campaigning, we find a personal website delivers a significantly
more votes than web 2.0 campaign tools. Our findings are seen to confirm
normalization overall. However, the much wider exploitation of social media tools by
minor parties may mark a turning point in e-campaigning history, with the technology
being more effectively deployed in future elections.
A Net Gain?
Web 2.0 Campaigning in the Australian 2010 Election
The study of online campaigning occupies a small but increasingly important
area of study for political science. Sitting at the intersection of the political
communication, election campaigns and party change literatures it raises new and
provocative questions about modern day electioneering. Central among these questions
has been whether the use of digital media can shift the power balance between minor
and major parties to allow the former a stronger voice in communicating with potential
voters, or simply reinforces the dominance of the latter - the so-called ‘equalization’
versus ‘normalization’ hypotheses. The relatively inexpensive nature of the new
information and communication technologies (ICTs) combined with their lack of
central editorial control and interactive properties prompted early expectations that
smaller and more marginal players could benefit disproportionately from them, and
gain a new audience online that eluded them in the mainstream media, leading to an
equalization or at least re-balancing of inter-party competition. As the technology has
become more commercially viable and mass usage expanded, however, established
political interests are seen as ‘upping’ the stakes in terms of design and promotion of
their sites, thereby wiping out any advantages smaller players could accrue and
producing a ‘politics as usual’ or normalization scenario.
To date, studies of the equalization – normalization debate have looked largely
at the supply-side of campaigns and compared websites in national elections to assess
how competitive smaller parties’ offerings are with those of their larger counterparts
(Gibson et al., 2003a; Gibson et al., 2003b; Newell, 2001; Small, 2008; Tkach-
Kawasaki, 2003; Vaccari, 2008). Conclusions have been generally supportive of
normalization with some caveats regarding Green parties’ web presence and that of the
far right. Little work has been done, however, to examine the question from an
outcomes perspective. i.e. by joining up supply-side studies with effects on voters.
Even if the smaller parties’ web efforts are not of the quality of their major
counterparts, having an online presence may provide an important new platform for
communication with casually interested voters and thereby potentially increase their
electoral support. The rise of web 2.0 or social media tools are seen as particularly
helpful in terms of raising smaller players’ profiles, given their freely available and
widespread uptake and popularity (Gueogieva, 2007).
2
This paper seeks to re-evaluate the equalization - normalization debate in two
key ways. First we examine it over time and particularly in terms of the shift from the
web 1.0 era in the web 2.0 or social media era. To what extent have the major parties
registered a consistently stronger presence online across the web 1.0 and web 2.0
eras? Or has there been a shift from a more equalized situation initially to one of
major party dominance? And has this persisted through into the web 2.0 era?
Secondly, we assess the debate from a more comprehensive demand and supply
perspective than has hitherto been employed. Specifically, we evaluate the impact of
these various modes of digital campaigning on the electorate to trace whether they are
actually effective in generating support. Put simply, even if major parties emerge as
holding a dominant position in terms of the extent and variety of their web
campaigning efforts, can this be linked to any substantive or practical outcomes in
terms of electoral gains? Secondary questions of interest concern the impact of the
social media on election campaigning generally. While platforms like Facebook and
Twitter allow for more interaction with voters, we lack a thorough understanding of
the extent to which these tools are actually being used locally in elections.
These questions are addressed using data from 2001, 2004, 2007 and 2010
Australian Candidate Study. This time period covers the transition from web 1.0 to
web 2.0 and provides a unique insight into changing patterns of elite adoption of
technology. Our analysis proceeds in four stages. First we review the literature on e-
campaigning, focusing particularly on studies that have addressed the normalization
vs. equalization debate. We then move to the Australian data to assess patterns of
adoption among minor and major party candidates over time, looking particularly at
take-up of web 1.0 and web 2.0 tools across the two groups. Have the major parties
dominated uptake across the period or has the picture been more mixed with smaller
parties exhibiting greater enthusiasm for the newer more interactive campaign
technologies. Finally, we examine the effect of different types of e-campaigns on
voters and the extent to which they are successful in mobilizing electoral support.
Web Campaigning: the Equalization vs. Normalization Debate
From the late 1990s onward, scholars started to examine campaign websites in
national elections. The analyses generally proceeded through identification of a range
of core functions—information provision, participation—that parties were
transferring into cyberspace which were operationalized through a series of coding
3
indices (Bowers-Brown and Gunter, 2002; Gibson and Ward, 1998; 2000; Margolis
et al. 1999). A key question addressed by these studies was whether ‘cyberspace’, as
it was then commonly referred to, was creating a more equal of level
communications, whereby smaller and more marginalized interests could promote
themselves directly to a new audience and gain increased support. The internet, with
its exponentially greater bandwidth, low cost and fast and unmediated reach into
people’s homes, presented a seemingly golden opportunity for those frozen out of
established media channels to raise their public profile and get their message out.
(Corrado and Firestone, 1996; Gibson and Ward,1998; Rash, 1996).
While in theory this ‘equalization’ hypothesis sounded plausible, early
empirical analyses of individual level uses of the internet challenged the idea that the
internet might be promoting voices of the marginalized. Internet users were largely
already active offline and well-resourced (Bimber, 1999; Norris, 2001; 2003). This
move toward a reinforcement of existing biases in political participation and a
growing commercial colonisation of the web led to wider claims that a
‘normalization’ of cyberspace was occurring, whereby established interests were
simply replicating their offline power in the online environment (Margolis and
Resnick, 2000). These claims were extended and supported in the party sphere with
some studies pointing to the larger parties as having more content and better designed
sites (Bowers-Brown and Gunter, 2002; Norris, 2001; Gibson et al 2003a; Gibson et
al. 2003b Schweitzer, 2008; Ward, 2002). Other studies identified a more mixed
picture, however, (Gibson et al. 2003c; Gibson and Ward, 1998; Newell, 2001,
Schweitzer, 2005; Tkach-Kawasaki, 2003), with the Greens in particular producing
highly competitive sites. Evidence from more recent studies has tended to confirm the
dominance of the larger parties (Carlson and Strandberg, 2005; Jackson, 2007;
Michalska and Vedel, 2009; Small, 2008; Strandberg, 2009; Vaccari, 2008; Williams
and Gulati, 2007). While research into the extent and effort of local level online
campaigning by minor and major party candidates in the U.S. and UK also similarly
indicated support for the normalization thesis (Gibson and Ward, 2003; Gaziano and
Liesen, 2009).
The growth of social media has given fresh impetus to questions about an
equalizing of power relations between parties and other political organizations. The
networking and viral nature of web 2.0 technologies like Facebook, Twitter and
4
YouTube are seen as an important new resource for weaker fringe players that lack a
communications infrastructure and access to mainstream news outlets (Gueorguieva,
2007). Certainly the high profile achieved by Howard Dean and the surprising victory
of Barack Obama in the 2004 and 2008 U.S. Democratic primaries were attributed to
skilful use of social media tools (Hindman, 2009; Trippi, 2004; Harfoush, 2009). A
number of initial studies that have examined Scandinavian parties use of tools such as
YouTube and Facebook have concluded that minor parties are equally if not more
active on these platforms than their major counterparts (Carlson and Strandberg,
2008; Kalnes, 2009), particularly those on the left.
Normalization vs. Equalization in Web Campaigning : Demand-side studies
A key follow-up question in addressing whether trends toward a
normalization or equalization of inter-party competition are occurring as a result of
the uptake of web campaigning is whether it actually translates into increased
electoral success for those employing it? Certainly, the online efforts of Barack
Obama in the 2008 U.S. presidential election cycle have been seen as highly
significant if not crucial in securing victory during the primary season. Systematic
investigation of those claims and indeed the impact of e-campaigns on voters,
however, is limited. Taking a ‘macro’ perspective, Ward (2011) examined the
question of whether web campaigns helped smaller parties mobilize electoral support
by examining the rise and fall of new parties in Australia since the internet first
emerged. Over the period 1996 -2009 he argues against the internet yielding any
advantages for small parties to survive, let along thrive. He finds that the fringe
players were not any more likely to establish websites in the first place, nor were they
more likely to survive overall compared to pre-internet days.
Other studies have taken a more ‘micro’ level approach to the question of
whether internet campaigns matter for the electorate by profiling the visitors to party
and candidate websites. These studies have largely shown audiences to be small and
distinctive, with higher levels of political interest and partisanship than average users
(Ward and Lusoli, 2005; Michalska and Vedel, 2009; Gibson et al. 2010; Smith and
Rainie, 2008). As such mobilization effects are seen as likely to be limited when they
do occur, lending support to the normalization thesis. The partisan affiliation of the
visitors has not generally been reported. However, evidence from the 2010 UK
election suggested that Liberal Democrat voters were most active in accessing official
5
party resources online (Gibson et al., 2010). Evidence from ‘meetups’ in the 2004
U.S. primaries indicated that these online tools were a key element in propelling
Howard Dean from obscurity to front runner (Williams et al, 2004). Thus, while the
audience the audience for web campaigning is clearly a small minority of the
electorate, if that it is skewed toward minor party supporters then this might indicate
a potential for equalization to be occurring.
A final set of studies of direct relevance to the question of web campaign
effects are those that have examined the fortunes of individual candidates that have
campaigned online. This ‘micro’ level perspective has revealed a somewhat different
picture to the visitor profiles discussed above. Essentially. net of a range of other
factors such as resources, party support and mainstream media exposure, these
studies have concluded that a web campaign site has been consistently associated
with increased electoral support (D’Alessio, 1997; Gibson and McAllister (2006;
Sudlich and Wall (2010).i
Overall, then, considerable evidence appears to have accrued to support the
normalization scenario in party politics online. However it is largely drawn from the
‘supply’ side analyses and adoption patterns in the web 1.0 era. Studies of the
demand side of the equation have been more limited but would appear to suggest
support for both normalization and equalization are occurring in that web campaigns
of both the web 1.0 and web 2.0 variety have been linked to small gains in electoral
support. What is needed, therefore, is a more integrated analysis that first identifies
the ways in which parties and candidates are campaigning online. In particular, is
Analysis of the impact of web 2.0 usage has revealed a
more mixed picture, however. Experimental work by Hayes et al (2008) in the U.S.
and analysis of YouTube feedback by Carlson and Strandberg (2008) in Finnish
elections suggested no electoral advantage accruing for web 2.0 campaigning.ii
Williams and Gulati’s (2007) examination of Facebook usage by U.S. presidential
primary candidates concluded positive effects. Finally, Gibson and McAllister’s
(2011) analysis of the 2007 Australian election reported significant gain for parties
using web 2.0 campaign technologies. Given the low numbers accessing the e-
campaign resources and the high self-selection effects, it was concluded that rather
than direct effects, online campaigns produced a two-step mobilization effect
whereby campaign sites stimulate the activists who then go mobilize others in their
offline networks (see also Norris and Curtice, 2008; Vissers and Quintilier, 2009).
6
there a difference in the extent and nature of web campaigning undertaken by large
and small parties and how has that change over time? Then, attention needs to focus
on the extent do these strategies actually resonate with and are responded to by the
electorate? Even if smaller parties are becoming more competitive in their provision
of online election resources, if web campaigning fails to connect with voters then
claims for any real redistribution or equalization of inter-party competition are
difficult to support.
Changing Patterns of Web Campaigning in Australia
This paper focuses on two main research questions. First, we trace of adoption
of web 1.0 and web 2.0 technologies by parties over time in order to test whether
major party dominance in e-campaigning exists and has increased or decreased. Our
hypothesis is that after some initial experimentation in the very early days of web
campaigning that the major parties quickly moved to a position of online dominance,
through the greater resources that they could deploy to develop and refine what was
then a relatively new technology – the so-called ‘normalization’ hypothesis.
However, as web campaigning became more widespread and accepted as a campaign
practice, and particularly given the lower entry costs associated with social media
tools, minor parties have utilized the technology increasingly effectively – i.e. an
equalization hypothesis. In a second step we update studies of web effects and link
the patterns of differentiation in e-campaign style to electoral outcomes.
To conduct this analysis it was necessary to have a data source that provided a
consistent measure of the use of web campaigning over the time period in question
and particularly that could differentiate the type of tools that are being used and
whether this differs according to party. These data are available in the unique
resource of the Australian Candidate Study (ACS), which is a survey of all national
election candidates which has been conducted since 1987 (see Appendix for details).
Since 2001, the ACS has asked similar questions about the use of web applications
during election campaigns. We begin therefore by using the ACS surveys to trace the
growth in web campaigning in Australia over the past decade, a period of dramatic
expansion in the electoral potential of the web, as well as in the growth in the social
media. We then examine the impact of these different styles of web campaigning on
voters, looking specifically at whether candidates’ derive any benefit in terms of
electoral support from their use.
7
To test the hypothesis that there has been a move from normalization to
equalization in web campaigning among candidates in Australian elections we build a
picture over time of candidates’ interest in, and use of, the technology. Our first
indicator is the extent to which election candidates themselves reported making use of
the internet for election news and information. Candidates’ use of the internet for
election news suggests very high levels of use, certainly compared to that of the
electorate. For example, in 2001 79 percent of major party candidates reported using
the internet for election news many times; this compares to just 1 percent of voters.
Similarly, hardly any of the candidates had no internet access in any of the election
years; this compares with 41 percent of voters in 2001, 33 percent in 2004, 25 percent
in 2007 and 17 percent in 2010. Clearly candidates have been using the internet
consistently as a source of election news and information for an extended period of
time. The hypothesis that major party candidates will adopt the technology more
quickly than minor candidates is supported by the results in Table 1. In 2001, 79
percent of major party candidates used the internet many times, compared to 57
percent of minor party candidates. Over the next three elections, however, minor
party internet use increased consistently, and by 2001, slightly more minor party
candidates than major party candidates reporting using the web.
Table 1: Candidates’ Use of the Internet for Election News, 2001-2010 (Percent)
2001 2004 2007 2010 ------------------------------- ------------------------------- ------------------------------- ------------------------------- Major Minor Major Minor Major Minor Major Minor
Yes, many times 79 57 74 65 81 72 83 85 Yes, several occasions 12 20 14 16 11 12 9 9 Yes, once or twice 3 9 3 6 6 9 4 6 Access but did use for election information
4 5 8 4 2 2 3 0
No internet access 2 9 1 9 0 5 1 0 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 (N) (168) (287) (163) (265) (158) (193) (138) (107)
‘Did you make use of the internet at all to get news or information about the [2001, 2004, 2007, 2010] Federal election?’ Major party is Labor, Liberal, National. Minor party is Green and (for 2001-2007 only) Australian Democrat and One Nation.
Sources Australian Candidate Studies, 2001-2010.
The second indicator of internet use among candidates is the extent to which
they regard particular types of media as being important to election campaigning.
8
Once again, the surveys have asked a consistent question about how important each
candidate rated particular types of media for election campaigning. Gaining access to
television has usually been regarded as the most effective means of reaching voters,
and that is reflected in the results in Table 2. Between 2001 and 2007 television was
ranked as most important by the major party candidates. However, in 2010 television
was ranked third after newspapers and radio by major party candidates. Between
2001 and 2007 most media sources were seen as less important by minor party
candidates when compared with their major party counterparts. That situation was
reversed in 2010, and all four media sources were regarded as more important by the
minor party candidates. This may reflect a greater professionalization of election
campaigning among the minor parties, and a greater awareness of the importance of
the mass media generally.
More importantly for our hypothesis, the results in Table 2 show that minor
party candidates consistently ranked the internet as more important in all four surveys
when compared to major party candidates. Indeed, in the 2010 election minor party
candidates ranked the internet as the most important of all four media sources for
campaigning, while major party candidates ranked it last. In the space of just 10
years, the internet has grown from a small part of election campaigns to a major one,
equal to or even surpassing television in its perceived importance. This is a profound
change in the nature of election campaigning, and reflects the recognition of the
potential of the internet to affect election outcomes. And at least as important, it is a
change which has not been lost on the minor parties.
Table 2: Importance of Media for Election Campaigning, 2001-2010 (Percent)
2001 2004 2007 2010 ------------------------------- ------------------------------- ------------------------------- ------------------------------- Percent say ‘very important’
Major Minor Major Minor Major Minor Major Minor
Television 73 68 77 75 80 72 67 70 Radio 60 49 57 58 57 57 68 74 Newspapers 59 66 53 67 50 64 71 72 Internet 9 17 10 30 22 33 57 76 (N) (168) (287) (163) (265) (158) (193) (138) (107)
‘In the election campaign generally, how important would you rate the following media for campaigning?’ Major party is Labor, Liberal, National. Minor party is Green and (for 2001-2007 only) Australian Democrat and One Nation.
Sources Australian Candidate Studies, 2001-2010.
9
Another way of investigating these differences is to examine the time
(measured in hours per week) that candidates reported spending on various aspects of
the 2010 election campaign.iii For the major party candidates, Table 3 shows that
traditional forms of electioneering (such as leafleting, organizing direct mail, and
door-to-door canvassing) were most important. This occupied an average of 24.3
hours per week. By contrast, minor party candidates spent just an average of 8.7
hours per week on these activities, almost one-third of the major party figure. Nor is
this discrepancy a result of incumbency among major party candidates. In fact, non-
incumbent major party candidates spent more time in this activity—27.5 hours per
week on average, compared to 19.4 hours among incumbents. Spending time on
media interviews was also important for major candidates, with an average of 16
hours per week, followed by party activities (8.3 hours).
Table 3: Time Spent on Campaign Activities, 2010 (Hours Per Week)
Major Minor
Media (radio, TV interviews; speaking on the telephone; newspaper interviews)
16.0 10.8
Electioneering (doorknocking, canvassing; organizing direct mailing; distributing leaflets)
24.3 8.7
Party activities (attending fund raising events; meetings with party members)
8.3 7.0
Web campaigning 4.6 8.9 (Managing content for online videos; managing content for a social network profile)
(1.7) (4.0)
(Communicating using twitter; managing content for an email newsletter)
(1.2 (1.8)
(Managing content for a website; managing content for a blog)
(1.7) (3.1)
(N) (140) (107)
‘Please indicate below how many hours per week you spent on each of the following activities in your campaign?’
Source Australian Candidate Study, 2010.
Once again, minor party candidates reported spending substantially less time
on the more traditional campaign activities. By contrast, these candidates reported
spending almost twice as much time on various aspects of web campaigning as their
major party competitors. For example, while the average major party candidate spent
1.7 hours on videos and social networking, the average minor party candidate spent 4
hours. In total, minor party candidates spent almost 9 hours on web campaigning, as
10
much as they spent on traditional electioneering activities. This is also twice what the
average major party candidate spent. Once again, this difference is not accounted for
by incumbency.iv In the next section we examine whether the additional time spent on
these technologies had any significant effect on the vote that a candidate received in
the 2010 election.
The findings thus far have presented a challenge to the idea of normalization
as characterizing the early phase of web campaigning in Australia. Minor party
candidates have consistently regarded the internet as a more important tool for
campaigning than their major party counterparts and put more effort into maintaining
online communication with voters. This would suggest that the internet did offer
something new and significant to minor parties in their election campaign. However,
as noted above, normalization is a multi-faceted concept and although certain parties
prioritise it in their electioneering activities, whether this translates into additional
votes is a separate question. Our final measure of the importance of web campaigning
across parties, therefore, is based on the reported use of the personal webpages plus
other forms of e-campaign tools stretching into the web 2.0 era.
The increasing use of web campaign tools from 2001 to 2010 is shown in
Tables 4 and 5. The results are split across two tables because a much wider range of
e-campaign items were included in the 2007 and 2010 surveys providing a more
nuanced picture of adoption. Prior to 2007 (i.e. in 2001 and 2004 elections) only use
of a personal web page was measured. The results for the early period are shown in
Table 4. They reveal a divide between major and minor parties in the adoption of
campaign websites, with around of half of Labor and Coalition candidates
maintaining an online presence and approximately one third of the candidates from
the smaller non-parliamentary parties doing so. The gap remains largely the same
across the two time points.
11
Table 4: Candidates Maintaining a Personal Campaign Website, 2001 and 2004 Elections (Percent)
All Major party Minor party -------------------------------------- -------------------------------------- -------------------------------------- 2001 2004 2001 2004 2001 2004
Yes 37 39 49 47 30 34 No 63 61 51 53 70 66
-------------------------------------- -------------------------------------- -------------------------------------- Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 (N) (394) (359) (140) (135) (254) (224)
The question was: ‘Did you maintain a personal website on the internet as part of your election campaign in the electorate?’ Estimates are for lower house candidates only. Minor parties are Australian Democrat, Green, One Nation.
Sources 2001, 2004 ACS.
Moving onto the 2007 – 2010 period, as Table 5 makes clear, by the time of
the 2010 election, candidates were using all aspects of the web more frequently.
However, the findings show a clear picture of major party dominance in the use of
personal web sites for campaigning, and that increased again by 2010. Indeed, in the
2010 election more than twice as many major party candidates reported having a
personal website when compared to minor party candidates. Minor parties use of
personal website remained virtually unchanged since 2001. Turning to the use of
other types of ‘early’ web applications, i.e. e-news, online chat and promotion of the
website via other media, the differences are less pronounced. For example, the
proportions using email newsletters to circulate to voters doubled across both minor
and major parties to around two-thirds of candidates, while a majority of both
reporting using SMS/text messaging.
Aside from the increasing divide in the use of personal web pages among
major party campaigns, the most significant pattern in Table 5 is the greater uptake of
web 2.0 applications by minor party candidates, particularly in terms of social
networking applications. The beginnings of this pattern are evident in the 2007, with
minor party candidates showing slightly higher levels of use for all four web 2.0
campaign tools. In 2010 this pattern is much more pronounced. For example, around
one third of major party candidates report using social networking sites such as
Facebook compared to almost nine in ten minor party candidates.
12
Table 5: The Use of Web Campaigning, 2007 and 2010 (Percent)
2007 2010 ------------------------------- ------------------------------- Major Minor Major Minor
Dedicated webpages Personal website 64 28 Personal website 73 32 Webpages on party site 71 79 Webpages on party site 88 96
Web 1.0 Email newsletter 33 36 E-news/bulletin 70 65 Advertised email/webpage 68 58 Email 97 96
Web 2.0 Pages on social networking site 42 47 Social networking sites 68 84 Podcasting 3 4 Flickr 7 7 Videodiary/vodcasting 10 17 Video sharing sites 35 46 Personal weblog or blog 9 21 Twitter 30 38 Online chats with voters 4 11 SMS/text messages 72 55 Campaignlog 41 96
2007: ‘Did you provide any of the following services during the election campaign?’ 2010: ‘Below is a list of internet-related tools that can be used to communicate with voters during elections. For each one please say how important they were for you in the election campaign.’ Major party is Labor, Liberal, National. For 2007, minor party is Green, Australian Democrat and One Nation; for 2010, Green only.
Sources Australian Candidate Studies, 2007 and 2010.
Overall, Tables 4 and 5 provide mixed support for our original hypothesis that
web campaigns would be moving from a more unequal playing field dominated by
the major parties to a more equalized situation. On the one hand, the evidence
regarding personalised websites challenges the hypothesis in that it shows there has
been little change over time in terms of major party dominance; if anything the
disadvantages experienced by minor parties online are intensifying, with less well
known candidates showing decreasing enthusiasm for launching their own home
page. The increasing gap suggests that this type of web campaigning carries
increasingly high entry costs. Where once a personal site was something that could be
managed and run as an amateur project, the design and maintenance of a personal
webpage has become a professionalised activity. As well as party status and resources
one needs to consider the role of incumbency here also, in that incumbents are likely
to have already personal webpages to communicate with their electors. This is
supported by the evidence. In 2010, for example, 93 percent of incumbents reported
having a personal webpage, compared to 43 percent of challengers.
13
In the use of less resource intensive web 1.0 era tools such as email, e-
newsletters and personal pages on a party home page, there does not appear to be any
difference in uptake between the two types of candidates. However, in tracking
patterns of web 2.0 use across major and minor party candidates we see more support
for the normalization to equalization hypothesis in that these newer e-campaign
techniques are increasingly the domain of the minor parties. With the exception of
sms and text messaging minor party candidates were more likely to us all of the
newer social media campaign tools than major parties. Indeed the inclusion of text
messaging as a web 2.0 tool is questionable in that beyond its use as part of Twitter
(which is already measured here) it acts more like conventional web 1.0 broadcasting
tool for sending updates and alerts.
In summary, it would appear that a bifurcation strategy is taking place in
terms of major and minor party use of the web in their election campaign efforts.
While the major parties are investing heavily in establishing their own purpose-built
personalised web presence, the smaller parties are largely by-passing these more
resource intensive approaches to the technology. Instead, they are establishing
profiles in the cheaper online social spaces that already exist and, perhaps more
significantly, where the voters collect and interact.
The Electoral Consequences of Web Campaigning
In this final section of the paper we model the impact of these various types of
web campaign on the vote for candidates in the 2010 election. The first stage of the
analysis involved investigating whether we could find commonalities across the types
of web campaigning reported in Table 4 and aggregate them into broader categories
of web campaigning. We conducted an exploratory factor analysis on the ten items
and the results are reported in Table 6.
The results of the analysis suggest that these activities can be reduced into
three main categories. A web 2.0 factor clearly emerges that captures the user-
generated and collaborative activities associated with applications such as Twitter,
photo and videosharing sites such as Flickr and YouTube and social networking sites
such as Facebook. Older more ‘top down’ broadcast types of web 1.0 campaign
activities such as use of email newsletters and email in general are capture in a
second factor. Text messaging also loads on this factor, confirming our contention
that this forms a more static informational dissemination tool rather than an
14
interactive web 2.0 type of device for voter communication. The maintenance of a
campaign log is also part of this factor, indicating that campaign diaries and blogs
were used for circulating news and information rather than proving forums for
feedback and voter participation. A third category to emerge is that of personal
webpages, a finding that confirms that this form of web campaigning is not simply an
extension of the web 1.0 suite of tools as might have previously been thought.
Offering further support for this distinction is the strong negative loading of personal
profiles on party sites on this factor, indicating that maintaining a personal website is
not related and even in complete contrast to simply having an entry on one’s party
home pages.
Table 6: Candidates’ Use of Web Campaigning, 2010 (Factor Analysis)
Factor loadings ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1 2 3
Web 2.0 Twitter .72 .10 -.16 Videosharing sites .69 .23 .15 Social networking sites .64 -.11 -.17 Flickr .63 .06 .07 Web 1.0 E-news/bulletins .18 .75 .09 SMS/text messages .01 .62 -.22 Campaignlog .13 .59 .07 Email -.05 .54 -.03 Personal webpage Webpages on party site .10 .16 .83 Personal webpage .20 .24 -.60 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Eigenvalues 2.28 1.38 1.17 Percent variance explained 23 14 12
Varimax rotated factor loadings from a principal components factor analysis with unities in the main diagonal. Estimates are for Liberal-National, Labor and Green candidates standing in the House of Representatives only (n=208).
Source Australian Candidate Study, 2010.
To evaluate the net impact of web campaigning on the vote, we constructed a
multivariate model. The web campaign variables were constructed by creating multi-
item scales,v representing the three types of web campaigning activities. In addition,
it was necessary to take into account a range of other factors that shape the vote that a
candidate receives. We therefore control for the candidate’s personal characteristics,
15
reflected in their age, gender and education. The marginality of the constituency at
the previous election may influence the amount of campaigning each candidate
decides to engage in, since safe seats will encourage less campaign activity compared
to more marginal ones. Party is also taken into account.vi Finally, the political
resources that each candidate can command can influence the vote they attract. These
resources are measured here by their length of party membership, whether or not they
lived in the constituency, the number of party workers they could count on during the
campaign, and by their advance preparation for the campaign.vii These are all factors
that have found to be important in shaping each candidate’s vote in Australian
elections (Gibson and McAllister, 2006, 2011). The dependent variable is the percent
of the first preference vote that each candidate received, and is estimated for House of
Representatives candidates only.viii
The results in Table 7 show that net of the range of other factors likely to
influence a candidates’ success, web campaigning did have a significant influence on
their vote total. However, this does not hold for all three modes. In particular
campaigning via personal websites was most clearly associated with increased electoral
success, while utilizing older web 1.0 technologies actually appears to reduced a
candidates’ ability to recruit votes. Finally, web 2.0 campaigns, while having a positive
impact on the vote, did not generate significantly higher rates of support. Since the
dependent variable is the percentage vote, the partial coefficients for each type of web
campaign reflect the change in the percentage vote caused by engaging in the activity
in question. Thus, put into practical terms, having a personal website (as opposed to a
webpage on a party site) was found to increase a candidate’s vote by 1.78 percent, net
of other things. Engaging in web 1.0 appeared to reduce the vote, this time by just
under 1 percent of the vote. Using web 2.0 tools, increased the vote by just under one
half of one percent, but just falls below statistical significance. Given that these results
control for party size and also the resources available to a campaign, the conclusion of
an independent effect of web campaigning via a personal site is compelling. The
negative effect for web 1.0 is more difficult to explain, but is perhaps a reflection of the
fact that it is old technology and is widely used. For example, spending time on an
email newsletter—as 70 percent of major party candidates reported doing—may
convert few voters and, more importantly, divert the candidate from devoting valuable
time to other, more effective, web campaigning applications.
16
Table 7: Candidates’ Web Campaigning and the Vote (OLS Regression) Partial Standard
Web campaign¹ Personal website 1.78* .07* Web 1.0 -.89* -.06* Web 2.0 .59 .04 Individual resources Age (years) -.07 -.05 Gender (male) -1.58 -.04 Tertiary education -.08 -.01 Constituency marginality (percent) -.01 -.01 Party membership (Green) Labor 16.14** .45** Liberal-National 23.86** .64** Political resources Length party membership (years) .16** .11** Live in constituency .07 .02 Party workers (number) .01* .06* Length of campaign preparation (months) .23* .06* ------------------------------------------------ Constant 15.83 Adj R-squared .88 (N) (208)
** statistically significant at p<.01, * p<.05.
Ordinary least squares regression coefficients predicting the percentage first preference vote in the 2010 election, for Liberal-National, Labor and Green candidates only standing in the House of Representatives. Variables are scored zero or one unless otherwise noted.
Source Australian Candidate Study, 2010.
The other variables in the model largely affect the vote as we would expect.
The individual resources that the candidate brings to the election are unimportant in
determining the vote they receive, as is the marginality of their constituency. Political
resources are important in the form of length of party membership, which reflects the
ability to use party connections to gain greater resources and public profile, and
preparing for the election well in advance. The most important effects, as we would
expect, are party membership: judged against the Greens, the excluded category,
Labor candidates won over 16 percent more votes, and Liberal-National candidates
nearly 24 percent more votes, other things being equal.
Conclusion
This analysis has examined the question of whether web campaigning has
progressed and changed over time, looking specifically at the question whether
17
patterns of adoption have promoted the fortunes of smaller or larger parties. We
addressed the question in two steps. First, from a supply side we examined whether a
diversification of style and strategy in web campaigning has emerged since the rise of
social media or web 2.0 tools and to what extent that diversification is associated with
party status and size. In a second step we examined the impact of varying web
campaign modes on the electorate to establish which (if any) yielded electoral
benefits, and whether these benefits could be seen to accrue to particular parties.
Our results have confirmed that a dual strategy is developing, with major
party candidates favouring personalised purpose-built campaign sites while those
from smaller parties tend to colonise the new public spaces that have developed for
user-generated content and social interaction online. The results support the
normalization hypothesis to a certain degree, in that it appears that the design and
maintenance of a personal web presence is moving increasingly out of the financial
reach of the smaller parties. However, the moves by those from the minor parties onto
web campaigning via third party-provided platforms such as Facebook and Twitter
show that they are not being crowded out of the web campaigning environment and
are more actually a stronger presence in these new and highly popular digital public
‘spaces’.
The key follow-up question that this research sought to explore is whether this
differentiation has electoral consequences, particularly for the smaller parties.
Although the major parties may be investing heavily in their individualized web sites,
the return at the ballot box may not be so clear cut. Certainly the networking and viral
communication possibilities created through social media tools make them a
potentially important electoral weapon. Our results have not supported this claim,
however. The electoral returns that a candidate enjoys from having his or her own
personal website significantly outweigh any benefits of using web 2.0. That said, the
small but positive effect for web 2.0 may presage bigger effects in the future, as the
technology is more widely used by voters in elections.
18
Appendix The Australian Candidates Study surveys have been conducted since 1987 in
parallel with the Australian Election Study surveys of voters (see
http://aes.anu.edu.au/). The 2001, 2004 and 2007 surveys used here were conducted
among all major party House of Representatives and Senate candidates, plus Green,
Australian Democrat and One Nation candidates. In 2010, the small number of
Australian Democrat and One Nation candidates were excluded, leaving the Greens
as the sole minor party.
The ACS is a post-election mail-out, mail-back survey which receives
extensive support from all of the political parties in order to achieve an effective
response rate, including a personally signed letter from each party’s central office
encouraging completion of the questionnaire. In 2001 the response rate was 56.8
percent, in 2004, 53.6 percent, in 2007, 49.9 percent, and in 2010, 45.5 percent. A
confidentialized version of the unit record file is available from the Australian Social
Science Data Archive (http://www.assda.edu.au/).
19
Notes i It is noted that Bimber and Davis’ (2003) analysis of the 2000 election cycle
using survey data found little evidence that candidates’ e-campaigns were able
to convert undecided voters to their cause.
ii In Finland, only one in twenty candidates were reported to have made use of
YouTube in the 2007 national elections, although one third reported engaging in
blogging (Carlson, 2008; Carlson and Strandberg, 2008). Similar findings
come from the 2007 Danish elections (Klastrup, 2008).
iii The survey asked about 14 types of election campaigning activities. They are
grouped here into six categories, which emerged from a factor analysis of the
items. The question was not asked in 2007.
iv Non-incumbent major party candidates spent 4.3 hours per week on web
campaign activities, compared to 5.1 hours per week for incumbents.
v The scales were constructed by first coding missing values to the mean, and
then dividing each item b its standard deviation. The items were then summed,
respecting signs, and the resulting scales was rescored from zero to 10.
vi Since party is included in the model, we were unable to also control for
incumbency, since no Green candidates had been elected to the lower house in
2007.
vii It would have been possible to control for many more factors, but the relatively
small number of cases placed restrictions on the range that could be included
here. The eventual choice of independent variables was driven by our previous
findings (Gibson and McAllister, 2006, 2011).
viii The small number (n = 39) Senate candidates are excluded since they do not
stand for a constituency, and are elected to represent a whole state or territory
by a different electoral method.
20
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