Web Sites in the European Elections

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Web Sites in the European Elections

• Carlo Hagemann
• Nijmegen Institute for Communication Research
• Radboud University Nijmegen

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European Union

• EU is governed by
• Council
• Commission
• Parliament
• Parliament is the only directly representative
  institution
• Parliaments power is confined to co-decision

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Legitimacy of European Parliament

• European Parliament is considered to be
• Intransparent
• Invisible
• Highly relevant or.
• Low voter turnout
• Second order national elections (Hix)

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Second order national elections

• European elections are considered not too
  relevant
• European elections are considered a mega-opinion
  poll
• Fringe parties benefit
• Government parties lose

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Research Question

• To what degree, and in what manner do political
  parties incorporate their electoral strategies
  into the Internet Web sites?
• More specifically
• In what manner can ideological and
  national-cultural influences on campaign style
  and material be discerned?
• Even more specifically
• In what manner can campaign style and material be
  seen as meant for a second order national
  election campaign?

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Ideology or National-Culture

• Since European elections are considered
  second-order national elections
• Hypothesis European campaign is equal to
  national campaign
• Only little attention for Europe
• National issues instead of European issues
• Hypothesis If campaign issues and frames differ,
  it is between countries, not between ideologies

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Research Design

• Content analysis
• Archive of Web sites prior to the European
  Elections
• Two-stage-analysis
• Features recording unit Web site
• Issues and Frames recording unit Article
  about European Union

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General observations

• Web sites supplement the rest of the campaign
• Information provision
• Interactivity is mainly one way
• Web sites are rather sophisticated
• Most features are present on all Web sites, but
• No fundraising in the Netherlands and Ireland
• Opinion polling reserved for the UK

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Europe in Ireland
www.finegail.ie
Candidates
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Europe in the UK
www.labour.org.uk
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Europe in the Netherlands
www.vvd.nl
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Europe in Germany
www.spd.de
Eurokampa.de
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Features National and ideological
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Issues
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Frames
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Summary

• Features do not correlate with ideology. If they
  correlate, it is with nationality
• Issues
• Social issues are Social Democrats, whereas
  finance is Christian Democrats and Liberals
• Expansion of EU is a Dutch and German issue
• Frames
• National frame is UKs and Social Democrats
• UKs campaigns are least about political substance

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Plans for Further Research

• Comparison with other elections, and off-election
  years
• Expanding on second order national elections
• Seeking for more theoretical substance in
  political science literature
• Archiving, and securing data
• Content Analysis could be more rigorous (and more
  tedious)