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Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Blogs, Social Networks and E-Politics

The Evolution of Campaign Websites.
Watch this five part series of videos with Professor Christine Williams as she comments on Blogs, Social Networks and E-Politics. Christine B. Williams is a Professor of International Studies and Government at Bentley University.

She studies political communication with an emphasis on new and emerging technologies. Recently her research has focused on Internet-hosted technologies. In 2000, Professor Christine Williams and her research team began analyzing the content of U.S. House and Senate campaign websites, a research project that has continued through the campaign cycles of 2004 and 2006. She is now analyzing Election 2008.

Building Online Relationships.
Controlling the Message in Cyberspace.
Analyzing the Facebook Factor.
The Future of E-Politics.
During the 2006 midterm elections, as blogs and social networks began to emerge as factors in online politics, Professor Williams investigated the impact of Facebook support on a candidates final vote shares. Her team found that Facebook support did indeed have a significant effect on election results, particularly in the case of open-seat candidates. These results were reported during the 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association. In the video below, Professor Williams discusses her Facebook study as well as her observations on the evolution of online campaigns.

For follow up research on the extent of candidates’ use of the video sharing YouTube site in 2008, and an analysis of which Congressional candidates were more likely to use this tool, click here - Abstract: A large majority of the major party candidates for the Senate opened YouTube channels as did a much smaller proportion of those running for House seats in 2008. This is about double the percentages of House and Senate candidates who made use of profiles on the social network Facebook site when these emerged as campaign vehicles in 2006.

For House candidates, campaign fundraising is the only strategic resource that differentiates both having a YouTube channel and the number of videos posted to it. In addition to better financed candidates, those in competitive elections also were more likely to open channels. Incumbents joined better financed candidates in posting more videos to their channels. Percentage minority is the only constituency attribute related to YouTube use, and is significant only for the level of activity.

YouTube is best understood as a vehicle for disseminating campaign communications produced by or for traditional media, especially television, and not so much as a new technology tool.

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