Web campaigning from a global perspective

Since the mid-1990s, political parties around the world have been moving into cyberspace. During the early years, it was not evident that many of them had any clearly defi ned ideas about why the internet would prove useful, or how they should present themselves on it. As time has passed, however, a number of key uses for the new technology have emerged as well some common trends in parties' and candidates' website content and appearance. Paramount among those uses has been the increasing use of the World Wide Web (WWW) and email as electioneering tools. This paper aims to chart the development of so-called "cyber-campaigning" by political parties both in terms of what they are doing (supply side) and also how the electorate are responding (demand side). The two key questions that will be addressed are 1) whether the practice is adding anything new to parties' campaign practices, and 2) what difference, if any, it is making for voters. Does cyber-campaigning play a decisive role in terms of changing minds, if not hearts? The analysis covers developments in cyber-campaigning across a number of contexts but has particular emphasis on Europe, the US, and Australia. Beginning with an historical overview, we chart the rise of web campaigning since the mid-1990s in the US and then move to look at the academic research that has attempted to compare and contrast website content and quality and also explain the distribution of party and candidate sites. After identifying some of the key elements within the cyber-campaign tool box, and the factors that appear to promote its practice, we then turn to look at the audience for election websites and discuss the crucial issue of the extent to which having a website actually matters for parties. One obvious measure of success may be whether the site actually produces an increase in the electoral support for the party. However, using such a measure may present problems given that more than half of the electorate in most countries remains without access to the web. Perhaps cyber-campaigns benefi t parties and candidates in more subtle and diffuse ways? Would perhaps having an attractive and user friendly website contribute to a positive image of organisational competence, and more importantly, contemporary relevance?