Welsh‐language provision on party web sites during the 2007 Welsh Assembly election

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent of Welsh-language provision on the web sites of political parties contesting the 2007 Welsh Assembly elections. Design/methodology/approach -Expert inspection was carried out on the web sites of 18 of the 19 parties contesting the election. Goal-directed walkthroughs were conducted on four web sites judged to be making a bilingual provision. Findings -Overall, the Welsh language was highly marginalised. While Welsh-language elements were identified on ten of the 18 web sites, only four web sites attempted to make a bilingual provision. On three of these, a user intending to interact with the web site through the medium of Welsh would still encounter English language content and/or navigation. Only one web site offered a fully Welsh-language experience. Research limitations/implications -This paper only considers the web sites of political parties and presents only a high level analysis. It does not consider the impact of Welsh-language provision on the electorate. Originality/value -This is the first paper to systematically examine Welsh-language provision on party web sites during elections for the National Assembly for Wales. In contrast to many studies of election-related internet activity in the UK, it considers a regional election rather than a UK general election.

Welsh-language provision on party websites during the 2010 UK General Election

“…In order to provide for a comparison with Cunliffe's study during the 2007 Welsh Assembly election [7], and to some extent his study during the 2005 General Election [6], the same overall approach of a qualitative expert inspection combined with goal-directed walkthroughs of selected websites was used.…”

“…Two studies by Cunliffe [6,7] have specifically examined Welsh-language provision on political party websites in the 2005 General Election and the 2007 Welsh Assembly election respectively. Both studies note the highly marginalized position of Welsh-language provision.…”

“…Table 2 marked with ‡ fielded candidates in Wales in the 2005 UK General Election and those marked with † fielded candidates in the 2007 Welsh Assembly Election. In all cases bar one, the overall website structure remains unchanged from 2005 [6] and/or 2007 [7], so in terms of their approach to providing regional information, political party websites have remained largely static. The only exception was that in 2010 the Socialist Labour Party had added a Wales-orientated section to their previously only UK-orientated website.…”

“…This inspection focussed specifically on the Wales-orientated website or section where this was provided and the UK-orientated site otherwise; therefore the characterisation of Welsh-language provision must be seen in this context. Following Cunliffe [7], three typical scenarios of Welsh-language use were considered; branding (e.g. in a bilingual logo); content (e.g.…”

“…This paper explores minority language provision in the context of the Welsh language and party websites during 2010 UK General Election. It draws comparisons with two studies by Cunliffe [6,7] which examined Welsh-language provision on party websites in the 2005 UK General Election and the 2007 Welsh Assembly election. Section 2 briefly introduces the political and linguistic context for the study and reviews existing literature.…”