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Digital Media in the 2008 Canadian ElectionPeter John Chen a & Peter Jay Smith ba University of Sydney, Sydney, Australiab Athabasca University, Alberta, CanadaAccepted author version posted online: 24 Jun 2011.Published online: 08 Feb 2011.

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Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 8:399–417, 2011Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1933-1681 print/1933-169X onlineDOI: 10.1080/19331681.2011.559734

Digital Media in the 2008 Canadian Election

Peter John ChenPeter Jay Smith

ABSTRACT. This article examines the use and impact of digital media in the 2008 Canadian fed-eral election. It examines the extent to which different digital media were employed by candidates andparties. The research informs a wider debate between competing schools of thought on the democra-tizing potential of the Internet. The article demonstrates a mixed role of digital media in the election.Structural, human, and financial resources can be identified as advantaging established parties access toboth conventional and online media. The pattern of adoption of different forms of digital media is alsosignificantly affected by factors internal to professional politics.

KEYWORDS. Campaigning, Canada, candidates, digital media, electoral politics, Internet, politicalparties

Scholarship on the political use and impactof digital media has been characterized by adichotomy between “cyber-optimists” (techno-logical determinists who think digital mediawill reinvigorate political life) and “cyber-pessimists” (social determinists who think thatlarge economic and political institutions willdominate new media just as they do exist-ing media). Recently a growing literaturehas emerged arguing the need to go beyondstrict determinism, arguing that the relation-ship between technology and society is complexand dialectical. This literature argues that wecan expect variation in the adoption and useof digital media between societies, driven by a

Peter John Chen lectures in media politics and public policy at the University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.Peter Jay Smith lectures in new media and politics at Athabasca University, Alberta, Canada.The authors thank Athabasca University for the Academic Research Fund grant. They also thank Ms.

Lamia Fahmi, who provided considerable assistance with French language translation, the content analysis ofFrench language materials, and logistical support. The development of this article has been improved througha number of anonymous reviewers.

Address correspondence to: Peter John Chen, Department of Government and International Relations,University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia (E-mail: peterjohnchen@yahoo.com), orPeter Jay Smith, Centre for State and Legal Studies, Athabasca University, 1 University Drive, Athabasca,Alberta T9S 3A3, Canada (E-mail: jays@athabascau.ca).

range of interconnected factors that will makeeach case unique.

It is with this understanding of a complexrelationship between technology and societythat this article examines the use and impactof an array of established and emerging digitalmedia on the 2008 Canadian federal election.Based on a broad set of data,1 we explore theapplication of digital media by candidates andparties. The analysis focuses on (a) the extentto which various forms of digital media wereemployed as campaign tools (either ad hoc oras part of an integrated strategy), and (b) therole of digital media in shaping the access gapbetween major and minor political parties (the

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“democratization versus normalization” debateinherent in the cyber-optimists versus cyber-pessimists schools of thought).

This article argues for a mixed role for dig-ital media in the election, providing evidencesupporting both democratization and normaliza-tion. While the use of digital media is one areaof campaigning where smaller parties are betterrepresented in the media, we identify structural,human, and financial factors that advantageestablished parties’ access to both conventionaland digital media.

By examining the “presence” of candidatesonline, this research demonstrates equalizationin access to online representation, but with vari-ations in the use of different online channels(such as social networking services) by estab-lished and minor parties. Variations betweencandidates in Quebec and the remainder ofCanada are also highlighted. Taking a spe-cific interest in the role of local candidates,the research demonstrates a considerable gapbetween “optimal” use of digital media andactual levels of adoption in close political races.We identify a positive relationship between can-didates’ investment in digital media and elec-toral success. However, this benefit cannot beseparated from the electoral advantages of estab-lished political parties and incumbent candidatessuch as greater resources and higher levels ofaccess to “free media” (exposure and journalis-tic coverage).

The article is divided into five sections: Thefirst section situates the article within the dom-inant themes of the literature. The second ismethodological. The next sections discuss theCanadian party system and detail our researchfindings in terms of candidates, political parties,and the relationship between centralization andcontrol, a relationship underscored by Canada’sparliamentary system and the continuing signif-icance of television broadcasting in Canada’smedia ecosystem. Finally, the article concludeswith a discussion of Canada’s particular use ofdigital media in the 2008 federal election.

LITERATURE

The two leading interpretations of the impactof digital technologies on democracy implicitly

accept the notion of determinism: (a) technolog-ical, viewing innovation as the most importantvariable shaping our societal, political, and cul-tural systems, and (b) social, in which societaland political factors shape the impact of tech-nology (Anstead & Chadwick, 2009).

Initial perspectives on the impact of digitalmedia on democratic processes focused on theassociation between networked computing andreduced barriers to the production and exchangeof politically relevant information (Jenkins &Thorburn, 2004; Ward & Gibson, 2009; Ward,Gibson, & Nixon, 2003, p. 22). Because of this,an expectation developed that these media chan-nels would present democratic benefits: benefit-ting small or marginal parties’ voices in electoralcompetition, in turn leading to increased plural-ism (Barlow, 1996; Corrado & Firestone, 1996;Malina, 1999). This “equalization thesis” fos-tered what Anstead and Chadwick described as“representative democracy optimism,” the claimthat the Internet “has the potential to reformand rehabilitate indirect vehicles of democraticparticipation, most notably political parties andelections” (2009, p. 59).

Soon cyber-pessimists responded with analternative interpretation of the relationshipbetween digital media and social, cultural, andpolitical life. Socially determinist in nature, theyargued that “pre-Internet power brokers willcome to define the online world autonomouslyof technological change” (Anstead & Chadwick,2009, p. 58). This alternative has been more gen-erally expressed as the “normalization thesis.”In terms of political parties and elections, thisapproach has been most notably advanced byMargolis and Resnick (2000) who argued thatlarge, traditional parties are able to utilize theirresources to purchase access to the new media,while maintaining the focus of journalistic atten-tion due to the relevance of their positions asincumbents.

This debate shaped the pioneering work ofSmall (2008a) on the impact of the Interneton Canadian political parties and elections. Ofthe 2004 federal election she argued, “TheInternet has not led to equalization in Canada.Accordingly, there is no evidence that Canadaas a party-centred country is more resistantto normalization. Despite equal access to theInternet, there is unequal success in cyberspace

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for Canadian parties” (2008a, p. 52). Small’swork concentrated primarily on the study of theWeb sites of nine political parties and was notsituated within a broader media ecology thatacknowledges the interdependence of old andnew media.

To broaden the debate beyond democraticexpansion and contraction, scholars have begunto emphasize a number of interdependenciesbetween types of media, and society and tech-nology. Ward et al. note “the net does not exist ina vacuum divorced from the traditional media”(2003, p. 23). Ward and Gibson go on to “reject. . . ‘one size fits all’ explanations and argue thatsocial and political shaping are crucial to under-standing the development of an organization’sapproach to new technologies” (2009, p. 35).Similarly Anstead and Chadwick maintain that“The relationship between technology and polit-ical institutions is best perceived as dialectical.Technologies can reshape institutions, but insti-tutions will mediate eventual outcomes” (2009,p. 58). According to these perspectives, onewould expect variances in the impact of theInternet on election campaigning in differentrepresentative democracies.

While scholars tend to have their own listsof factors that shape the electoral use of digitalmedia, four factors in particular are identified inthis article: (a) political-systemic, (b) organiza-tional, (c) financial, and (d) media environment.These are not mutually exclusive. The politi-cal system, for example, can regulate campaignspending, which in turn has an impact on finan-cial resources and how they are used. Eachfactor is outlined briefly below.

POLITICAL-SYSTEMIC FACTORS

The political system can have a significantimpact on the way digital media is adoptedfor political purposes. In particular, the degreeof political pluralism encourages greater use ofdigital media in elections. Ward and Gibsonobserve:

Presidential, candidate-centered, federalsystems are more likely to be respon-sive to interactive online technologiesthan highly centralized polities because

multilevel government with large numbersof independent actors is likely to result ingreater experimentation and innovation interms of campaigning. (2009, p. 35)

On the other hand, parliamentary systems aresaid to foster greater party discipline, whichfacilitates more national coordination, integra-tion, and control. The result is that the techno-logical affordances of the Internet “for creatingloose horizontal networks have fewer affini-ties with this set of arrangements” (Anstead &Chadwick, 2009, p. 63).

PARTY ORGANIZATIONAL FACTORS

While scholars have claimed that a hostof organizational factors impacts digital mediaadoption, of particular salience are resourcesand organizational culture. Resources speak tothe capacity of parties to maximize their use of arange of communication channels, and increas-ingly their capacity to use these in a coordinatedand integrated manner. While the equalizationthesis asserts that minor or marginal parties canproject a sophisticated Web presence at low cost,the counterargument is that resources still mat-ter in shaping Internet use (Ward & Gibson,2009) due to the increasingly complex nature ofonline publishing technologies and the integra-tion between low cost Web sites and paid adver-tising. Organizational culture, on the other hand,reflects the historical, ideological, and ideationalfit between digital media platforms and polit-ical party organizations (Ward, 2008; Ward &Gibson, 2009). In this way, parties on the left(viewed as having stronger, participatory, grass-roots organizational cultures) are seen to havea better cultural alignment with the interactivecapacities of the Internet, particularly new socialnetworking tools.

CAMPAIGN FINANCING

Related to the resourcing question above,how parties and candidates are financed (and thetype of regulatory control over financing) is rec-ognized as shaping their use of digital media.Here, electoral systems vary in the amount of

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money candidates and parties may spend. TheUnited States, for example, has greater latitudein terms of the amounts of money that partiesand candidates may raise and spend. The resultis that campaigns are expensive, but also thata range of performance is prevalent. As Davis,Owen, Taras, and Ward observe, “Candidate orparty websites flourish not only in quantity butalso in quality” (2008, p. 264). Alternatively,where there are legal restrictions on spending bycandidates and/or parties, there can be effectson the adoption and use of digital media. Thisis evidenced in countries like Canada, whosepolicies result in “a funneling of resources toparty organization rather than campaign organi-zations, and the strengthening of party Internetactivities rather than candidate online communi-cation” (Davis et al., 2008, p. 264).

“OLD” MEDIA, “NEW” MEDIA, ANDTHE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN

THEM

Until recently, there has been a tendency tostudy digital or “new media” separately from“old” media. This approach reflected the ten-dency in electoral competition for digital mediaelements of the campaign to be run separatelyor as adjuncts to conventional media campaigns.As this changed at the practice level, however,there has been a matching recognition that oldand new media need to be conceptualized asincreasingly interdependent. The rise of blog-gers and alternative journalism, for example,has created a complex interdependence betweennew and old media, one Hiler calls “mutu-ally parasitic” (2002). The use of the biologicalmetaphor has promoted the notion of a mediaecology or a media ecosystem with interactingsubsystems of old and new media—televisionbroadcasting, radio, print, and the Internet, thelatter with its wide assortment of social network-ing tools that facilitate increasing amounts ofuser-generated content (Naughton, 2006). Theresulting changing relationships between audi-ence and different media (interactivity, audi-ence sizes) produce a complex and shifting setof relationships that varies country by coun-try. This produces different effects in terms of

the capacity for minor parties to access estab-lished media and the types of media engagementstrategies in which candidates and parties mayengage.

METHODOLOGY

Given the scope of the conceptual frame-work for digital media election research outlinedabove, the study of the Canadian election anddigital media necessitates the use of a range ofdata sources and collection strategies. In focus-ing on systemic and organizational influenceson the way parties and candidates employ digi-tal media, a range of qualitative and quantitativesources is clearly important in accessing dis-parate information on the performance and asso-ciated meaning of media choices in the election,which by nature invokes an interest in structureand agency. Additionally, by deliberately tak-ing a media ecosystem approach to the study,we were conscious of the need to consider dif-ferent Internet submedia (technical protocols;for example, Web and e-mail), channels (gen-res and media types; for example, conventionalWeb sites, online video), and online commu-nities (virtual spaces and places; for example,social networking services (SNS)) as occupy-ing different parts of a continually changing,interactive ecosystem of media.

Five research methods were employed in thisstudy:

1. Content analysis of candidates’ use of dig-ital media. This analysis identified andquantified the use a number of Web sites(stand alone campaign sites, party “mini-sites” established for candidates withinthe party domain, third-party content host-ing such as blog sites), the functionalityof these Web sites (delineating betweenstatic “brochure ware” and more inter-active, “feature rich” sites), the accessi-bility of candidates using electronic mail(e-mail),2 and their use of and numberof social ties associated with SNS andhybrid systems with SNS characteristics (n= 217).3 Candidates were sampled usinga stratified sampling technique (every fifth

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riding from an alphabetical list of rid-ings with slight oversampling of territoriesand smaller provinces) in which all candi-dates in a selected number of ridings wereanalyzed against a predetermined codingframe previously employed in the 2007Australian and 2008 Albertan elections.

2. A structured candidate online survey thatassessed their computer literacy and use ofdifferent communications channels alongwith candidate perceptions of the valueof different communications channels.Additionally, the survey assessed candi-date use of information and communi-cation technologies in administrative andsupport functions in the campaign andthe assistance provided by the candidates’political party for different campaigningtechniques and channels (n = 38).

3. Semistructured telephone interviews withkey party personnel to examine the basisof media choices, electoral strategies, andobservations about the effectiveness of dif-ferent channels (n = 4).

4. Analysis of online video published by par-ties (n = 372). This content analysis iden-tified the type of video (who is the focusof the video and its genre style), tone (pos-itive, negative, mixed), and captured otherdata (length, date published).

5. Quantification of party leaders’ mentionsin blogs and online advertising from opensources.

THE CANADIAN PARTY SYSTEM

Party systems are typically classified by thenumber of parties present within a politicalsystem. For most of its history, Canada hada two-party system dominated by the Liberaland Conservative parties. From the early 1960sto the early 1990s, the Canadian party systemfeatured a two-and-a-half-party system, againdominated by the Liberals and Conservative par-ties with the social democratic New DemocraticParty regularly winning 20 percent of the vote,resulting in occasional minority governments.From 1993 to 2006, the Liberal Party domi-nated Canadian federal politics. From 2007 on,

the Conservative Party dominated. The rise ofthe Bloc Québécois as a party that regularlywins most seats in Quebec and the increasingsupport of the Green Party nationwide meansthat minority governments are becoming a com-mon feature of the Canadian political land-scape. With rising poll numbers in September2008, and hopeful of winning a majority, theConservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper,called an election for October 14, 2008, claim-ing that Parliament had become dysfunctional.4

CANDIDATES’ USE OF DIGITALMEDIA: FINDINGS

The next sections discuss our research find-ings, beginning with a discussion of the use ofdigital media by individual candidates, focus-ing on the role of these technologies in the localcampaign, including factors that lead candidatesto adoption of technology. The discussion, fol-lowing from the literature section, also consid-ers the impact of direct and indirect influencesof central party administration on technologyadoption by candidates.

Use of Specific Channels

A conventional way of examining the useof digital media by candidates is to examinethe extent of their use of various Internet sub-media, channels, and online communities. Thisapproach is useful in identifying the types oftechnologies to which candidates gravitate andin considering the rapidity of adoption of emerg-ing channels of communication.

Looking at the 2008 Canadian election, wesee a diverse pattern of technology adoptionacross the political spectrum. Focusing on fivemethods of campaign communication in Table 1,candidates are selective in the digital mediathey adopt. Choices are not correlated with theestablished nature of the channel (where famil-iarity and experience would suggest that oldertechnologies would have higher levels of adop-tion), but appear to be related to barriers toadoption. Consistent with the argument of theequalization thesis, those channels with compar-atively low adoption costs, for example, e-mail

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TABLE 1. Candidates’ Use of Digital Media, by Party (n = 217)

Party n Web site % E-mail % Mini-site %∗ Socialnetworkingservice %

Secondarysite %∗∗

Bloc Québécois 8 37.5 100 100 75 25Christian Heritage 11 9.090 100 100 45.454 9.090Conservative Party 44 95.454 95.454 100 63.636 11.363Green Party 43 44.186 100 97.674 65.116 16.279Independent 7 0 28.571 0 28.571 0Liberal Party 44 75 88.636 100 75 18.181Marxist-Leninist 4 0 0 100 0 0New Democratic 44 54.545 95.454 100 59.090 15.909Other 12 16.666 58.333 75 66.666 8.333Total/average 217 36.938 74.050 85.852 53.170 11.573

∗A candidate-specific entry, page, or subdomain within a main party Web site.∗∗An additional Web site associated with the candidate other than his or her main campaign Web site.

and “mini-sites” associated with their party, aremore commonly used. For example, 100 per-cent of candidates in the more minor ChristianHeritage and Green Parties used e-mail, andnearly 100 percent of candidates in both partiesused mini-sites.

Two candidate characteristics are related tothe use of Web sites–incumbency and instru-mentalism. Incumbents were far more likelyto have Web sites than non-incumbents (95%compared with 43%).5 In terms of instrumen-talism, the presence of “take action” (donate,join party, volunteer) functions was the mostcommon component of Web sites (more thantwice as common as the next highest designelement).6 This implies a relationship betweenincumbency, the use of political marketing toolsfor resource acquisition, and the choice of Websites as a useful vehicle for this type of activ-ity. That incumbency remains a factor in thisprocess of technology acquisition is interest-ing, however, as a number of factors (a growingmarket for hosting, the development of sophis-ticated free Web site software) has dramaticallyreduced the cost of personal Web sites over thelast decade. The connection between adoptionand deliberate instrumental choice appears to beassociated with professionalism within the party,where established parties are able to provideturnkey sites or “plug in” fundraising or mem-bership e-commerce tools (or links to centralparty Web site e-commerce pages) that can beembedded in individual candidates’ Web sites.

While the use of mini-sites is the most com-mon form of “online publication” by candidates,the provision of candidate-specific informationon party Web sites in Canada is quite mod-est, as illustrated in Figure 1, which examinesthe amount of content published in candidate“mini-sites” within their political party domain(based on a four-point scale). Comparatively, theuse of these sites has been growing in otherWestminster systems (Ward, 2008). The advan-tages of mini-sites include their low cost toparties (reusing their existing hosting and con-tent management systems); simplicity of useby candidates (as a service provided by theparty); clear party branding (including the pos-sibility to control the content and presentationof candidates more easily); and advantages interms of discoverability and search engine rank-ing. Paradoxically, mini-sites combine both theadvantages of equalization (low cost) and nor-malization (party control over candidate con-tent).

Turning to SNS—an area of activity that hasattracted considerable attention—it is clear thatthere has been strong growth in the adoptionof these services. This fits within a focus onthe impacts of barriers to adoption. Setting upa social networking profile requires compara-bly low levels of initial effort, and the servicesprovide useful tools for the recruitment andmanagement of social ties relative to other formsof community building online (Small, 2008b,pp. 85–86).

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FIGURE 1. Size of candidate “mini-sites,” by party (n = 217).

FIGURE 2. Candidates’ social networking service profiles, by service (n = 217).

Like the finding with mini-sites, however,we see that the overall investment in thesechannels is lower than might be anticipated.Candidates tend not to maintain a large num-ber of social networking profiles. Our dataindicate that the maximum number of socialnetworking profiles of any candidate in thesample was five. The mode for the samplewas one. This provides insight into the waythese services are perceived by candidates. Ifcandidates saw SNS as a useful means toaccess different constituencies online (for exam-ple, the voters of the “Facebook community,”

the voters of the “MySpace community”), itwould be reasonable to expect that candi-dates would employ large numbers of profilesas they extended their “reach” into different“gated communities” online (this is made eas-ier by technologies allowing simple syndicationof content across multiple platforms). In addi-tion, as campaign resources are limited, the useof different services would be rationally dis-tributed towards those with the largest marketshares (in Canada, Facebook and MySpace).7

However, as illustrated in Figure 2, this smallnumber of average profiles was concentrated

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on Facebook rather than distributed accordingto the market share of respective services.8

The low number of profiles may imply thatcandidates have yet to perceive the advantagesof the social networking elements of these ser-vices (for example, recruitment of volunteers,use of social media to distribute candidate andparty messages via friendship groups, the abil-ity of voters to engage one another in dia-logue), as opposed to their value as “onlinebrochures.”

Candidates’ Overall Online Presence

Figure 3 shows the relative position of par-ties, as expressed by their candidates’ use of avariety of digital media tools for campaigning(expressed as “width”) and the average invest-ment in each point of presence (“depth,” or theextent to which this channel is “populated” withcontent or social networking ties). The radiusis an expression of variation within the party(average standard deviation).9

As shown in Figure 3, the major polit-ical parties are closely clustered together,indicating that, regardless of political,

demographic, and/or resource differences(see Party Influences on Technology Adoptionby Candidates, below), the aggregate extentto which candidates employed digital mediais remarkably consistent across the politicalspectrum in Canada. The key exception to thisobservation is the Bloc Québécois, an outlierwhose candidates had far fewer points of pres-ence online, but who “populated”10 the channelsthey did use to a greater extent. Overall, thetotal level of investment in digital media bycandidates of the Bloc is consistent with that ofother parties, and so this does not represent alower level of activity in the online environmentduring the campaign. This variation could bethe result of the lack of Québec French languagenative online services and the correspondinglylow take-up of SNS by Québécois. Not until2009 did Facebook offer a version of Facebooktailored to Quebec French speaking Canadiansand not French in general (Cohen, 2009). InQuebec, only 12 percent of the population at thetime used Facebook, compared to 30 percentin the neighboring English-speaking provinceof Ontario and the overall Canadian rate of 25percent (SEO, 2008.)

FIGURE 3. Distribution of candidates’ use of digital media, by party.

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Evidence of Competitive Effects at theLocal Level

While the previous discussion points to astrong normalizing effect when performanceis aggregated, we did identify a modest posi-tive correlation between individual candidates’aggregate use of digital media and the averageuse of digital media by all candidates when ana-lyzed at the level of the electoral district (0.326).This finding points to a “competitive effect”in technology adoption choices by candidates:Candidates are clearly making choices about thelevel of investment in online media based onthat of their direct competitors within their elec-toral district. This has an interesting implication:While the extent of online information avail-able to voters varies depending on their electoraldistrict, there is a similar amount of online infor-mation available that voters can expect withinelectoral districts.

The Use-Value Dimension

While the above use of digital media by can-didates is based on content analysis, survey dataenhances these observations with an understand-ing of the value perceptions of different mediaforms. Based on a simple Likert scale (1–4),

Figure 4 shows surveyed candidates’ value per-ceptions of a wide range of campaign activitiesincluding both digital and conventional media.Assessing value perceptions separately fromperformance allows us to determine the extent towhich the adoption of different channels may bedue to relative ease (low barriers to entry), ratherthan candidates’ perceptions that the channel hasvalue (and vice-versa).

These value perceptions demonstrate endur-ing preferences for established techniques suchas door knocking and ongoing strong prefer-ences for traditional advertising including lawnsigns, television advertising, and radio advertis-ing. What is interesting is that Web sites are nowrecognized as the second most valuable cam-paign tool, and SNS are identified as numbersix. Overall we see that perceptions of the valueof digital media channels now rival establishedtools. Conventional channels, for example, aver-age at 3.108, while digital media 3.000, withsimilar standard deviations 0.532 versus 0.594,respectively.

Considering the difference between what isvalued and what is able to be employed by can-didates, Figure 5 demonstrates the overall under-utilization of different media based on candi-dates’ perceptions of value. Collecting both useand value of different communications channels

FIGURE 4. Candidates’ value perceptions of communications.

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FIGURE 5. Comparative under-utilization of different communications channels by candidates.

from sampled candidates on a four-point scaleallows us to compare these levels. Overall thisfigure illustrates that candidates report that theyemployed all of the media channels surveyedto a lesser extent than their perceptions ofthe channels’ utility would indicate would beoptimal, reflecting resource constraints felt bymodern candidates. However, particularly inter-esting are the channels with the highest discrep-ancy between value perception and use. Somecan be explained simply in terms of highercost, for example, advertising using television,radio, and billboards, while others—particularlydigital media—reveal discrepancies that wouldappear to be related to the higher level of tech-nical capacity required for production, such asonline audio and video and the use of mobiletelephone messaging.

Figure 5 is interesting, as it indicates possi-ble growth areas of activity given changes tothe barriers of adoption, especially the differ-ent effects of the amelioration of financial versustechnical barriers. While the established partiesdemonstrate remarkably similar levels of activ-ity in the online environment, it must be recog-nized that they demonstrate different fundrais-ing capacities. Taking Ontario as an example,candidates of the Conservative Party spent, onaverage, 77.806 percent of their legally imposed

spending limit, Liberals 70.865 percent, andNew Democrats only 31.185 percent, yet theiroverall online presentation was very similarin absolute terms.11 While this could arguestrongly in favor of the equalization hypothesis,the impact of financial resources on the capacityto campaign is focused on conventional media,particularly paid advertising. Thus, equalizationonline does not overcome the advantages ofsome candidates in their capacity to buy adver-tising media.

Party Influences on Technology Adoptionby Candidates

The strategic and tactical choices candi-dates make in their use of different media areinformed by a number of sources, includinginstitutional (party) factors. This, in turn, sug-gests forces of normalization at work. The extentto which candidates use digital media (or anycampaign strategy) as the result of support pro-vided by their party is at the core of the “central-ization” of modern campaigning. Candidates’strategies are influenced by a number of factors,including direct command and control manage-ment, provision of resources “tied” to specificpurposes, and consensus development throughdaily e-mail or teleconferences. As the Online

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Campaign Director of the New DemocraticParty reported:

We made the support that we give to ourcandidates a real priority . . . Specificallyonline we developed mini-sites. . . . Wehad daily bulletins that we sent to all ourcandidates. . . . We equipped them withtools and tips on how to improve their cam-paign and also sort of the messages of theday and how they can help take advantageof the national message which will get intothe evening news. (Poorooshasb, October31, 2008)

To some extent, centralization is a responseto a growing weakness in the capacity of par-ties to organize locally and their inability to findsufficient volunteers to mount robust local cam-paigns. The National Campaign Director of theConservative Party observed:

. . . volunteers are getting harder andharder to come by. Some campaigns that Iran locally . . . had a 1000 campaign vol-unteers. [Today] in that same riding . . .

you are lucky to get 50 volunteers. This

is pandemic, right across the country, rightacross all parties. There are too many com-peting things for volunteers to do. So moreand more campaigns are becoming central-ized, at least in our party anyway. We askedcandidates locally to raise volunteers andmoney for their own campaigns, to can-vass extensively and campaign on thingslocally. We basically supply everythingelse—the messaging, the materials, thedesigns, the demographics, you know, thetalking points, everything comes from thecentral party. (Finley, October 29, 2008)

The candidate survey focused on direct sup-port (such as training and advice) given to can-didates across a range of campaign activities:advertising, canvassing, media relations, use ofInternet, and recruitment. As Figure 6 illustrates,candidates perceive that their parties provide themost assistance with media activities (in gen-eral and with the Internet) over interpersonal andorganizational ones, for example, canvassingand recruitment. This demonstrates that, at thelevel of candidates, party machines are stronglyprojecting a message about the importance ofdigital media.

FIGURE 6. Candidates’ perceptions of assistance provided from party, by campaign activity(n = 38).

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While this would indicate strong direct sup-port in the use of digital media, the translationof this effort on the part of central party cam-paign administrators into activity by candidatesis not always direct. On the one hand, theConservative Party exercised the greatest con-trol over Web site use. This is in large part dueto the fact that as the frontrunners, they had themost to lose and did not want any “surprises”from the party or their candidates’ online pres-ence. The National Campaign Director of theConservative Party observed that “. . . in manyways the online media has to be just as tightlycontrolled as your more traditional media is. Itis very easy to have a lack of discipline amongyour regulars or contributors . . . The risk ofmistakes is extremely high” (Finley, October 29,2008). To lessen its risks, the Conservative PartyNational Headquarters offered an online tem-plate to its candidates, of which two-thirds tookadvantage. In effect, headquarters “managed theWeb sites for them.” As Finley admitted, “Theadvantage of this is that you have some con-trol over the content.” Overall, “there was a lotof control exercised from the central party onthe [local candidate’s] Web site” (October 29,2008).

On the other hand, the extent to which par-ties exercised control across the wider range ofdigital channels employed by candidates is lessclear. No significant correlation exists betweenthe candidates’ reported perception of assistanceprovided in the use of the Internet with theiroverall use of digital media (–0.021), indicat-ing that there may not be a direct “payoff” forparty investment in this area of activity. Theresearch did find, however, a modest positivecorrelation between a candidate’s use of digi-tal media and the average use of digital mediaof his or her party (0.346), indicating a “refer-ral effect” with candidates more likely to adoptmore digital media campaign tools when in par-ties with higher average use by other candidates.This may be explained in terms of a halo bias,a transfer of positive assessments of campaigntechniques with ideological alignment betweencandidates within parties.12 This is likely a resultof the systematic promotion and discussion ofthe benefits and application of digital media inthe campaigning process.

PARTIES’ USE OF DIGITAL MEDIA

By nature, the use of digital media by central-ized party campaign teams was a more complexand coordinated activity than that seen at thelevel of individual local candidates. In the 2008election, parties increasingly employed digitalmedia to support their other campaign activities,either as direct vehicles of organizational activ-ity or as elements of integrated marketing andcommunications strategies. The Coordinator ofOnline Social Marketing for the Liberal partyobserved:

. . . we were able to encompass everythingaltogether. What we are talking about isinstant information. By using the onlinestrategy we wanted to synchronize whetherit was Facebook or Twitter or Flickr or anyof those social media components . . . Ithink our information says that the averageFacebook user checks in two or three timesa day. So, if you want to get people infor-mation you use Facebook. (Miron, October24, 2008)

Whereas candidates tended to focus on chan-nels with low barriers to entry, parties tendedto focus on technologies that gave them greatercontrol over the content they produce, particu-larly through the use of Web sites and onlinevideo.

Campaign Web Sites

The primary online campaigning tool of par-ties was their main campaign Web sites, whichover the last five years have shifted from staticinformation repositories to dynamic informationhubs focused on shaping individual preferencesand other media coverage of breaking issues(Small, Taras, & Danchuk, 2008, pp. 115–116).These sites provided the primary online pointof presence for parties, with strong visibilityin search engine rankings (an essential elementif content online is to be readily discoveredby users). Traffic was driven to campaign Websites by considerable use of online advertisingacross generalist and specialist Web sites (FinleyOctober 29, 2008; Miron, October 24, 2008;Poorooshasb, October 30, 2008).

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While resources and perception of the valueof different channels tended to shape partyresponses to the opportunities of Web publish-ing in the 1990s, over the last decade, partycampaign Web sites have demonstrated isomor-phism in terms of their appearance and func-tionality (see Chen & Smith, 2010). In Canada,this has tended to be driven by structural factors(increasing party centralization), media ecosys-tem factors (attempts to rapidly respond to andset other media agendas), and as a result oflesson drawing, particularly from high-profilecampaigns in the U.S. The overall impact ofthis has been a reinforcement of politics-as-usual, with traditional parties with limited cit-izen engagement through, for example, policydebates.

This can be seen in the standard genre con-ventions of digital content employed by mostparties. From the content analysis of online con-tent (static and multimedia; see below), we seethis as particularly true in four areas:

1. Focus on the leader (name, image) andincreasingly disciplined use of consistentbranding

2. Positioning of video within the front pageof the Web site (a function of maturingcommunications markets where “dial-up”connections are in decline)

3. Key content areas (media releases, candi-date lists, policy documents)

4. Web site functionality/activity (onlinedonations, e-mail subscription services)

Overall, campaign managers have come toaccept the role of Web sites (a “pull” ratherthan a “push” medium) as skewed towards estab-lished supporters and professional media andnot overall citizen engagement. The tone ofcontemporary sites, therefore, focuses on main-taining the core branding of the party andleader and ensuring that external communi-cations are focused and “on message,” ratherthan direct persuasion of a mass audience. Thishas had considerable impact on the role oflocal party organizations in supporting the widercampaign, particularly in terms of bottom-upfundraising. The Conservative Party, for exam-ple, described online fundraising “as the only

kind of fundraising we did” (Finley, October29, 2008). The reliance on online fundraisingextended across the board. The Green Partyacknowledged that it may have raised as muchas 90 percent of its funds online (McDonald,October 31, 2008). The implications of this forcore-periphery relations appear significant, butclearly point to further centralization.

These similarities belie interesting variations,however, and the 2008 election is notable in thedifferent levels of investment in the design and“population” of party Web sites. In 2008, theLiberal and New Democratic Parties investedconsiderably more in their Web sites in terms ofdesign and content than the other major parties,reflecting resource differences between the cam-paigns (either in absolute terms, or in the propor-tion put towards the online campaign).13 Thiswas particularly true of the Liberal Party, withStéphane Dion using a daily video diary thatprovided campaign commentary and key dailymessages,14 and the party generating an issue-specific Web site to highlight the party’s envi-ronmental policy (http://www.thegreenshift.ca).This approach was also used in the nega-tive strategies employed (as seen in other par-liamentary democracies, such as Australia).Attempting to distance the main party Website and message from negative campaign-ing, the Liberal Party and Conservative Partyused separate Web sites without party brand-ing: http://www.bushharper.com by the Liberal,associating Harper with the unpopular U.S.administration, and http://www.notaleader.ca bythe Conservative Party attacking Dion’s lead-ership credentials. This strategy was alsoemployed in the 2004 election (Small et al.,2008, p. 117), demonstrating that the partiesare using successive electoral cycles to experi-ment and learn retaining lessons from successfulstrategies over time.15 This has not always beenthe case, particularly when digital media wasseen with a more skeptical view by campaignprofessionals.

The Social Networking Dimension

The emphasis on the party leaders is alsoevidenced by their use of SNS (inherently

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structured, as they are around individuals).While these attracted considerable attention inthe media because of their novelty in this cam-paign, Small (2008b) has argued that theseservices are not being employed to their fullpotential for voter/supporter engagement:

. . . the Facebook profiles were staticand low on information. Whereas hun-dreds of press releases and reality checkswere uploaded to the home pages of theparty Web sites, none of it was uploadedto Facebook. Mainly, the profiles fea-tured photographs from the campaign trailand/or the parties’ television advertise-ments. (2008b, p. 86)

The relative investment in these services differedby party, with the Liberal candidates sampledhaving on average 400 “friends” compared with253 for the New Democrats and 95 for theConservatives. This appears to be the result ofinternal views of the value of these channels.The Conservative Party considered these sitesas “passé,” which tends to demonstrate the per-ceived value of new online services in termsof their comparative novelty (Finley, October29, 2008). Other major parties, however, sawthem as more valuable. The Liberal and NewDemocratic Parties developed their own appli-cations to syndicate content across these ser-vices (McDonald, October 31, 2008; Miron,October 24, 2008; Poorooshasb, October 30,2008). However, the intent in both instanceswas not to stimulate citizen-to-citizen or citizen-to-leader dialogue, but to reinforce an image,provide content, or raise funds.

Party Use of Online Video

Matching the growth in available bandwidthamong the electorate has been an interest by par-ties in the use of online video to communicatewith key stakeholders (supporters, potential sup-porters, and media). Video has been a way forparties to project their messages more stronglyby highlighting key branding elements (lead-ers) and by correspondingly attracting a strongaudience response (Finley, October 29, 2008;

Miron, October 24, 2008). As the online cam-paign director of the New Democratic Partyobserved, the use of video material had strongappeal:

. . . presenting people with more interest-ing content than just a traditional boringpress release. People are more inclinedto go see the videos from the actualannouncement in the town halls and . . .

we certainly saw that on our main websitendp.ca. The video selection was the mostpopular page on the site. (Poorooshasb,October 30, 2009)

In the analysis of online video published bythe major parties, we can examine a numberof factors: construction of the videos in termsof content (“genre conventions”), the overalltone of the material (positive-negative), and theprovision of content in French.

Examining the genre conventions employedby parties, Figure 7 presents a number of inter-esting observations:

• While focus on the party leader is a dom-inant element of videos (61.827% of allvideos featured the party leader exclu-sively), the two largest parties tended touse the leader the least (Conservative andLiberal Parties).

• Individual candidates [singularly (9.677%)or with the leader (6.720%)] rarely featurein online video content, providing moreevidence of the relative lack of interest incandidates other than the leader in central-ized party campaign strategies.

• Resources tended to shape the con-tent of online video considerably. TheConservative Party was more likely to re-post made-for-television content online,16

while the other parties were more likely topost video of events (e.g., rallies).17

• In terms of democratic dialogue, the use ofonline video appears to continue the “one-to-many” nature of most political adver-tising. Few videos served as response tothe positions or content of other parties,focusing on key party messages rather

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FIGURE 7. Genre conventions of online video published by parties.

than a more general policy debate. In thisregard, a small number of ConservativeParty videos are an exception to this find-ing, focusing on a critical response to theLiberal party’s economic and environmen-tal policies.

Leader Visibility: Blog References andSearch Engine Advertising

The open nature of the Internet means thatthe direct publication of content is only onemeans by which parties have public exposureonline. In recent years, campaign professionalshave turned to the generation of third-party con-tent (such as through the provision of materialto key bloggers and the distribution of eas-ily republishable content) to increase their totalmedia exposure. The relationships between par-ties and alternative media varied between theparties. While some maintained loose relation-ships (the Conservative and the Liberal Parties;Finley October 29, 2008 and Miron, October 24,2008) the New Democratic Party was more sys-tematic in cultivating coverage in blogs, creating“NDP Rapid Responders . . . a direct appealto bloggers and others online who wanted tohelp with the campaign” (Poorooshasb, October

30, 2008). On a more passive level, blogs alsoserved as good measures of “instant feedback”on messages that the campaigns were generat-ing, with the larger parties maintaining formalsurveillance of the blogs deemed to be signifi-cant opinion leaders or good third-party judgesof campaign messages.

While the success of these types of “cultiva-tion” practices is hard to determine, it is possibleto track the coverage of key figures across theblogosphere. Compiling data against party lead-ers’ names, Figure 8 shows the number of dailymentions of party leaders throughout the cam-paign. As the figure shows, the incumbent PrimeMinister enjoyed a considerable advantage overhis rivals in blog mentions (assuming that allpublicity is good publicity), generally receiv-ing twice the coverage of any of his individualrivals.

CONCLUSION

The role of digital media in the 2008Canadian election campaign emerges as a com-plex and interesting picture. This complexityresults from a number of sources: the broad-ening technical nature of digital campaigning,the increasing audience for online content (both

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FIGURE 8. Leader name mentions in blogs, campaign period.

140

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80

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t 01

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announceselection

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(French 1Oct, English

2 Oct)

Harperreleases

economicpolicy

S Harper S Dion J Layton G Duceppe E May

Source: Technorati data, http://technorati.com/, 8, 27 September and 15 October 2008.

as a percentage of the Canadian population andas consumers of increasingly sophisticated con-tent online), the evolving media ecosystem anddeveloping interrelationships between differentmedia forms (online and off), and developingnorms about what is effective and what is not.

In considering the factors that shape the useof digital media, we can clearly see the impactof political-systemic, organizational, financial,and media environment variables in the waydifferent media are perceived, adopted, andemployed. Overall, the research points stronglyto political-systemic (centralization tendenciesassociated with the strong party model of polit-ical organization in Canada), organizational(through attempts at coordination and control),and resource (but not strictly financial resources)on the patterns of adoption of digital mediaby candidates and parties. At a tactical level,central party machines have become increas-ingly aware of the emerging nature of themedia ecosystem, employing strategies to “win”earned media through the innovative use of dig-ital media and using the online environmentas a useful surveillance system as part of their

marketing-orientation focused on message con-trol, the minimization of risk, and branding.

The impact of these activities on Canadianelectoral democracy is also complex. Thereremains a considerable argument for the equal-ization effect of digital media when we examinethe way candidates and parties engage with tech-nology to self-represent online, with minor par-ties (centrally and through the candidates theyfield) having an equivalency of representationonline, particularly through the use of serviceswith low barriers to entry. However, a broaderview of the impact of media ecosystem fac-tors supports many of the arguments associatedwith the normalization hypothesis. The relation-ship between major parties’ capacities to accessestablished institutional and commercial media(either through financial resources and paidadvertising or through the “incumbency effect”of their status as “parties of government”) meansthat the emerging media ecosystem is also, tosome extent an “echo-system,” with incumbentshaving greater visibility online. To date, thisadvantage appears to be self-maintaining, withmajor parties better placed to leverage their

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visibility into other resources (especially onlinefundraising), which serve to maintain estab-lished relationships within Canada’s politicallandscape.

Within the context of representative democ-racy, the initial unqualified enthusiasm on theimpact of technology on democracy must betempered by more nuanced analyses of thedemocratic uses of technologies. Barber, forexample, argues that “there is no simple orgeneral answer to the question ‘Is the tech-nology democratizing?’ until we have madeclear what sort of democracy we intend” (1999,p. 585). Barber’s clear preference is for whathe describes as “strong democracy . . . under-stood as deliberative and participatory activ-ity on the part of responsible citizens” (1999,p. 585). The prospects for strong democracymay be enhanced with the advent of Web 2.0or the “architecture of participation” (O’Reilly,2005). However, there was little evidence of thisin the 2008 election. Here, as indicated previ-ously, politics and political institutions matter.Barber suggests that representative democracypossesses “thin” democratic characteristics—a thinness some might suggest is exacerbatedin the Westminster model, where citizens areencouraged to have more passive roles in thepolitical process (1999). The evidence providedfrom our analysis of the 2008 Canadian elec-tion would appear to fit this argument, eitherbecause of the inherent thinness of electionsas sites for democratic action or the design ofdigital media campaigning sites and strategiesthat de-emphasize participatory citizens throughmessage control and the limited use of channels,such as emerging social networking services,that provide potential for enhanced interactivity.

NOTES

1. The data used in this study are availablefor replication at http://dvn.iq.harvard.edu/dvn/faces/study/StudyPage.xhtml?globalId=hdl:1902.1/15407&versionNumber=1.

2. Stand alone Web sites were coded against thefollowing properties: size; really simply syndication(RSS)/Atom syndication feed; blog (not an external bloghosted elsewhere, see secondary site); embedded video;embedded audio or a podcasting service; push-to-talk

voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) option; feedback formelement; online surveying or polling; search tool; sitemap;specific information/interactivity to allow the user to makea donation, volunteer time, or purchase merchandising;link to a members only/activists intranet/private page;subscription option for a mailing list (e-mail or physicalmail).

3. One coded all English-speaking candidates andone French. There are, therefore, no intercoder reliabilitymeasures.

4. For more on the Canadian party system and the2008 Canadian federal election, see these Web sites:http://www.mapleleafweb.com/features/political-parties-and-party-system-canada-history-operation-and-issues andhttp://www.mapleleafweb.com/features/2008-canadian-federal-election-results-and-summary.

5. Interestingly, while Conservative and Liberal can-didates’ use of Web sites increased between the 2004–2008elections, NDP candidates’ use declined significantly(down from 75%; Small et al., 2008, p. 116). Given thehigh level of use of mini-sites, it would appear that therehas been a substitution effect.

6. The coded functions were RSS feed, blog, embed-ded video, podcast, push to talk, feeback form, survey orpoll, search, sitemap, donation/purchase/volunteer, mem-bers’ site (intranet), mailing list.

7. This was observed in the 2007 Australian nationalelection (Chen, 2008). It would also be shaped byimperfect information (membership numbers tend to bedynamic).

8. This may well have been informed by perspectiveson the relative position of these services held at the partylevel, with a number of party key campaign staff highlight-ing the view that MySpace (in particular) was seen as aservice in considerable decline (McDonald, October 31,2008; Poorooshasb, October 30, 2008).

9. Plotting depth-width measures: The creation of thedepth and width measures was a deliberate attempt todelineate between the increasing ability to have a largenumber of points of presence and the investment of timeand effort to “populate” each (e.g., to fill a Web site or con-tent sharing service with content and/or functionality, orto collect nodes and/or subscriptions in social network-ing and content syndication services). The measures ofdepth and width were generated from raw data using thecreation of artificial scales (0 to 100) for both depth (acompound measure of the extensiveness of online con-tent and number of collected social networking ties) andwidth (the number of services or sites employed by thecandidate). The 0–100 scale was created as a relative mea-sure of performance based on a range created betweenthe lowest level of new media use (points of presence orcontent population) and the highest level of use in the sam-ple group. The relative nature of the scale was selectedto reflect the competitive nature of the electoral pro-cess, rather than an activity measured against an absolutenorm.

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10. This can be the extent of content hosted on Websites, in party mini-sites, or other content hosting ser-vices, or in the number of social ties collected in socialnetworking services.

11. The provincial average was 41.77 percent(Elections Canada Database, 2009).

12. This also extends top-down with a strong corre-lation between the extent to which the party leader hasFacebook “friends” and the average number of “friends”of their party’s candidates (0.525).

13. Interestingly the comparatively more sparse natureof the Conservative Party’s Web site mirrors the 2004and 2006 elections, which Small et al. (2008, p. 119)attribute to the recent formation of the party. Finley of theConservative Party reported that only 1.5 percent of thecampaign budget was spent in the online space (October29, 2008).

14. While maintaining, as Small et al. (2008, p. 124),a focus on the campaign as an extended “road trip,” whichdemonstrates the leader’s stamina.

15. Other similarities with negative campaigningemployed in the 2004 election campaign can be found,such as the public backlash against a tasteless video usedby the Conservatives (Showing the Liberal leader beingdefecated on by a bird; CTV.ca, 2008), which is remi-niscent of the “Paul Martin supports child pornography”media release of 2004.

16. Some of which was never aired on television(Finley, October 29, 2008).

17. Interestingly the Conservatives did not publishany of this more informally produced content, while theNew Democrats produced a considerable amount of thiscontent—including nearly identical speeches given in dif-ferent locations across the country.

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APPENDIX: LIST OF INTERVIEWS

Mr. Doug Finley, National Campaign Dire-ctor, Director of Political Operations,Conserv-ative Party of Canada, October 29,2008.

Mr. Jim McDonald, Executive Director,Green Party of Canada, October 31, 2008.

Mr. Adam Miron, Coordinator Online SocialMarketing Liberal Party of Canada, October 24,2008.

Mr. Nammi Poorooshasb, Online CampaignDirector, New Democratic Party, October 30,2008.

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