Party Competition on the Internet in the United States and Britain

Abstract

This article examines the prominence of Web sites of major and minor parties in the United States and the United Kingdom, comparing features such as search capabilities, membership forms, information on party organization and issues, characteristics of graphics, and currency of updates as well as their relative quality and sophistication.We also look at the prominence of major and minor parties in newspapers and magazines and in various search engines and sites for political junkies. We find that minor parties have a greater presence on the Web in the United Kingdom than in the United States, but even so, the sites of major parties in both countries are more prominent and sophisticated than those of minor parties, and major parties generally receive more media coverage than minor parties, both on-line and off-line.The data suggest that the established interests dominating most of the communications, transactions, elections, and political processes of advanced industrialized countries are extending their influence to these processes in cyberspace.

ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES, ONLINE SELF-PRESENTATION AND THE PERSONAL VOTE:Party, personality and webstyles in the United States and United Kingdom

“…While not the most important communication outlet, all parties and politicians increasingly utilize the World Wide Web (Gibson and Ward 2000;Margolis et al 2001) The website offers elected representatives a space to present themselves to their constituents. The website, to use Goffman's phrase, constitutes another 'front region' in which representatives disclose information about themselves that would not necessarily be exposed to another in a face-to-face encounter.…”

NetWorking/Networking: Citizen Initiated Internet Politics

“…With some exceptions, the tendency of "old" organisations such as trade unions has been to use the Internet as previous media of communication, not fulfi lling its most innovative aspects (such as interactivity; for this see Rättilä in this volume) and using it for top-down forms of communication. Findings like this have been highlighted by different studies concerning the websites of political parties (Margolis et al 1999;Gibson et al 2003) and institutions (Coleman et al 1999;Trechsel et al 2003). This evidence raises the question of whether old organisations jumping online are reproducing on the Internet their vertical styles of communication.…”

E-Parties: Democratic and Republican State Parties in 2000

“…However, Margolis et al (1999) found that the two major parties in the US had more extensive websites and received more attention on the web than minor parties.…”