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: rachel.gibson@manchester.ac.uk

Ian McAllister

Research School of Social Sciences

Australian National University

Canberra, ACT 0200

Australia

E-mail: ian.mcallister@anu.edu.au

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).

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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).

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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

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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

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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

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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,

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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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