Keeping up with the murphys? Candidate cyber-campaigning in the 2007 Irish general election

Parliamentary Affairs

Volumn 62, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 456-475

  Sudulich, Maria Laura ^a   Wall, Matthew ^a  

^a TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN   (Ireland)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 67651219370     PISSN: 00312290     EISSN: 14602482     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/pa/gsp008     Document Type: Article

References (44)

1. The authors wish to thank Professor Michael Gallagher, Professor Ken Benoit, Dr. Gail McElroy, Dr. Robert Thomson and the anonymous referees for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.
2. D. Dorling, H. Eyre, R. Johnston and C. Pattie, 'A Good Place to Bury Bad News? Hiding the Detail in the Geography on the Labour Party's Website', Political Quarterly, 73, 2002, 476-92.
3. P. Norris, 'Campaign Communications', in L. Le Duc, R. Niemi and P. Norris (eds) Comparing Democracies 2, Sage, 2002.
4. D. Denver, G. Hands and I. McAllister, 'The Electoral Impact of Constituency Campaigning in Britain 1992-2001', Political Studies, 52, 2005.
5. D. D'Alessio, 'Use of the web in the 1996 US election', Electoral Studies, 16, 1997, 489-501; R. Gibson and I. McAllister, 'Does Cyber Campaigning Win Votes? Online Communication in the 2004 Australian Election', Journal of Elections Public Opinion and Parties, 16, 2006; R. Gibson and I. McAllister, 'Online Campaigning in the 2007 Australian Election: Did the Web Deliver Votes?', paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston, 28-31 August 2008.
6. See for example B. Barber, 'Three scenarios for the Future of Technology and Strong Democracy', Political Science Quarterly, 113, 1998, 573-89.
7. As first suggested by M. Margolis and D. Resnick, Politics as Usual: The Cyberspace Revolution, Sage Publications, 2000.
8. As pointed out, for instance in R. Gibson, P. Nixon and S. Ward, Political parties and the Internet: Net gain?, Routledge, 2003.
9. R. Gibson, S. Ward and W. Lusoli, 'The Internet and political campaigning: the new medium comes of age?', Representation, 39, 2003, 166-80.
10. Ibid.
11. Explanations of the observed positive impact of cyber-campaigning include the possibility that (1) a politician's having an online presence generates greater coverage for that candidate in mainstream media; (2) that the measurement of cyber-campaigning may, in fact, represent a proxy for the extent to which a campaign is innovative or modernized generally, rather than the effects of cyber-campaigning specifically and (3) that better resourced and higher profile candidates are more likely to go online in the first place, meaning that the observed positive relationship between cyber-campaigning and electoral performance may be due to endogenous causation.
12. R. Gibson, S. Ward and W. Lusoli, op. cit. p. 168.
13. M. Marsh, 'None of that Post-modern Stuff around here: Grassroots Campaigning in the 2002 Irish General Election', British Elections & Parties Review, 14, 2004, p. 262.
14. Irish National Election Study, 2007.
15. Source 'Information Society and Telecommunications 2007' published by the Irish Central Statistics Office available online at http://www.cso.ie/ releasespublications/pr-inforsociety.htm.
16. H. Brandenburg and Z. Zalinsky, 'The media and the campaign', in M. Gallagher and M. Marsh (eds), How Ireland voted 2007, Palgrave McMilland, 2008.
17. This survey was carried out over a 2-3-month period immediately following the Irish general election, which took place on 24 May 2007. Copies of the survey were distributed by post to all candidates who registered for the election. The respondents broadly corresponded to the population's properties in terms of the gender and incumbency ratios. With regard to party affiliation, both Sinn Fein and the Progressive Democrats comprise small groups of respondents (12 and 9, respectively) as a result of having smaller numbers of candidates than the other parties as well as lower than average response rates.
18. See for example: S. Coleman, 'Online Campaigning', Parliamentary Affairs, 54, 2001, 679-88; R. Gibson, S. Ward and J. Newell, 'New Technologies: Italy's First Internet Election', in J. Newell (ed.) The Italian Election 2001, Manchester University Press, 2002, pp. 162-82; R. Gibson and S. Ward, 'Party Democracy Online: UK Parties and New ICTs', Information, Communication and Society, 2, 1999, 240-67; and R. Gibson and S. Ward, 'An Outsiders Medium?: The European Elections and UK Party Competition on the Internet', British Parties and Elections Review, 10, 2000.
19. T. Zittel, 'Lost in Technology? Political Parties and Online cyber-campaigning in Mixed Member Electoral Systems', paper presented at the ECPR General Conference, panel on party organisations and new information and communication technologies (ICTs), Pisa, 6-8.9.2007.
20. R. Gibson and I. McAllister, 2008; 2006, op. cit.
21. Ibid., p. 250.
22. N. Jackson, 'MPs and web technologies: An untapped opportunity', Journal of Public Affairs, 3, 2003, 124-37.
23. S. Ward and W. Lusoli, '"From Weird to Wired": MPs, the Internet and Representative Politics in the UK', Journal of Legislative Studies, 11, 2005, 57-81.
24. T. Zittel, 2007, op. cit.
25. R. Gibson, W. Lusoli and S. Ward, 'Nationalizing and Normalizing the Local? A Comparative Analysis of Online Candidate Campaigning in Australia and Britain', Journal of Information Technology and Politics, 5, 2008, 15-30.
26. Ibid.
27. R. Gibson and I. McAllister, 2006, op. cit.
28. R. Gibson et al., 2008, op. cit.
29. R. Gibson and I. McAllister, 2006, op. cit.
30. Ibid.
31. See, for example, Gibson et al., 2003, op. cit.
32. G. Selnow, Electronic Whistle-stops: The Impact of the Internet on American Politics, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1998.
33. For a given candidate, this measure is calculated using the following formulae: W - 1/N 2 1 for candidates with a website and W/N 2 1 for candidates without a website. Here W is the total number of candidates with a personal campaign website in the constituency and N is the total number of candidates in the constituency.
34. Although the roles of party affiliation and support are examined in some detail, and are found to play an important, though not determinant, role at the candidate level.
35. M. Marsh, 'Candidates or parties? Objects of Electoral Choice in Ireland', Party Politics, 13, 2007, 505.
36. The Standard In Public Office (SIPO) agency collects the expenditure returns and make them available to the public.
37. K. Benoit and M. Marsh, 'The Campaign Value of Incumbency: A New Solution to the Puzzle of Less Effective Incumbent Spending', American Journal of Political Science, 52, 2008.
38. M. Gallagher, 'Stability and turnout', in M. Gallagher, M. Marsh and P. Mitchell (eds), How Ireland voted 2002, Palgrave, 2002.
39. F. Wolfe, 'QSIM: Stata module to produce variables for clarify routines', Statistical Software Components S427801, Boston College Department of Economics, 2002, revised 23 Apr 2003.
40. Indeed, in the period following the 2007 election the Progressive Democrats were disbanded due to their winning only two seats.
41. As independents do not represent a unified group, they are not represented in Figure 1.
42. L. Weeks, 'We don't like (to) party: Explaining the significance of Independents in Irish political life', presented at The First Annual International Conference on Minor Parties, Independent Politicians, Voter Associations and Political Associations in Politics, Institute of Local Government Studies, School of Public Policy, University of Birmingham 29 November-1 December 2007.
43. P. Mair and L. Weeks, 'The party system', in J. Coakley and M. Gallagher (eds), Politics in the Republic of Ireland, 4th edn. Routledge, 2006.
44. M. Margolis and D. Resnik, 2000, op. cit.