CyberCampaigns and Canadian Politics: Still Waiting?

Abstract

The early election call in the fall of 2000 provided the perfect opportunity to study the impact the Internet has had on election campaigning in Canada. With the explosion of use the Net has seen since the 1997 general election, Canadian federal parties stood at the threshold of a new age in election campaigning. Pundits such as Rheingold (1993) have argued that the Internet will provide citizens with a way to bypass traditional media and gain unmediated access to each parties political message as well as providing a forum for citizens to engage the parties, and each other in deliberative debate. Through a longitudinal analysis of party web pages and telephone interviews with party staffers, we analyze the role the Internet played in the election campaigns of Canada's federal parties. Our findings indicate that the parties are still focusing on providing online features that talk at the voter instead of engaging them in any type of meaningful discourse. Most of these sites were exceptionally similar in their structure and in the type of content they provided. Generally, these sites served as digital archives for campaign material created with other media in mind and despite the multimedia capabilities of the Internet, these sites tended to be overwhelmingly text oriented. In line with Stromer-Galley's (2000) discussion of why candidates in the U.S. avoid online interaction, we also argue that little incentive exists to motivate parties to engage in any meaningful interaction with voters online.