This document summarizes the first two chapters of Benjamin Lee's thesis on the adoption and use of web tools in the 2010 UK general election. It finds that half of campaigns used both social media and conventional websites, and that use was driven by traditional and modern campaign techniques. However, the reasons for different levels of interactivity online remain unclear based on survey data alone. Interviews suggest individual attitudes may be important drivers of interactive behaviors online. The hypotheses that traditional or combined campaigns would be more interactive online were not supported by the data.

1. Benjamin Lee
Institute for social change
benjamin.lee@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk

2. INTRODUCTION
 My thesis: Is a study of the adoption,
implementation and organisational
implications of Web usage at the local level
in the 2010 UK general election
 This presentation: Focuses on the first two
chapters of my thesis dealing with the
adoption of web campaign tools and how
they are used

3. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND – PROBLEMS
 Political parties
 Declining membership (Katz & Mair, Mass & Bizen)
 Catch All/Electoral Professional parties (Kircheimer,
Panebianco)
 The end of linkage?
 Campaigns
 The arrival of political marketing
 Professionalization and modernisation (Green &
Smith, Gibson & Rommele, Norris)
 Why get involved?

4. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND - SOLUTIONS
 Can technology offer a solution?
 Internet and Democracy: Rheingold,
Negroponte, Toffler, Castells
 Party organisational change
 The Cyber-party (Margetts)
 The Network Party (Heidar & Saglie)
 Organisational hybridity (Chadwick)
 What about campaigns?

5. CAMPAIGNS IN THE WEB 2.0 ERA
 We are living in a post-Obama environment,
2008 a perceived watershed
 Emergence of Web 2.0
 Highly interactive, based on the ‘architecture of
participation’
 In the UK 2010 campaign most often represented by
Facebook and Twitter
 Easy/free to use
 So are we moving towards more connected
campaigns in the UK?

6. RESEARCH QUESTIONS
 Three things we need to know about the use
of Web 2.0
1. Are campaigns using it? TOOLS
2. If so how are they using it? BEHAVIOUR
3. What kind of campaign organisation is it
supporting? ORGANISATION
 Today I am focussing on questions one and
two

7. ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK
 Campaigns unlikely to be uniform, need a
framework to distinguish between them
 Need a socially determined reason to adopt
online campaign techniques, reject a purely
technologically determinist stand point
 Adopted Fisher and Denver (2009) indices,
sees campaigns as being traditional and
modernised to various degrees

8. TRADITIONAL AND MODERN CAMPAIGNS
 A heuristic device
 Traditional campaigns
 Emphasise techniques such as doorstep canvas and distribution of
leaflets
 Rely on building local networks of supporters, face-to-face or retail
politics
 Do not have access to political marketing tools, likely to be low
priority receive little scrutiny
 Modernised campaigns
 Emphasise techniques such as direct mail and telephone canvassing
 Rely on marketing techniques to deliver votes
 With access to money and advanced techniques comes greater
scrutiny
 NOT mutually exclusive

9. HYPOTHESES
 H1 traditional campaigns are likely to make
more use of social media and be more
interactive
 H2 modernised campaigns are likely to make
less use of social media and be less
interactive
 H3 combined campaigns are likely to make
less use of social media and be less
interactive
 H4 low activity campaigns are less likely to
make use of web campaign techniques

10. ALTERNATE EXPLANATIONS
 Party affiliation
 Different
parties have different propensity to
campaign online
 Campaign status
 Incumbent candidates, marginal candidates
 The digital divide in constituencies
 Some constituencies less likely to be online
 The digital divide in candidates
 Some candidates less likely to be online

11. WEB CAMPAIGN TOOLS
 Want to know the extent to which campaigns
adopted online tools
 Data comes from 2010 Electoral Agent Survey
 1079 cases across England, Scotland and
Wales
 Established survey, basis for original measures
of traditional and modern, although these could
not be replicated
 Good for measures of campaigning, but less so
for candidate specific measures

12. WEB CAMPAIGN TOOLS
No Web (%) Conventional (%) Social (%) Hybrid (%) Total (%)
Low Act. 64 (22.3) 107 (37.3) 24 (8.4) 92 (32) 287 (100)
Traditional 27 (12) 83 (36.7) 10 (4.4) 106 (46.9) 226 (100)
Modern 20 (10.2) 56 (28.4) 7 (3.6) 114 (57.9) 197 (100)
Combined 10 (4) 68 (27.3) 9 (3.6) 162 (65.1) 249 (100)
Total 121 (12.6) 314 (32.7) 50 (5.2) 474 (49.4) 959 (100)

13. WEB CAMPAIGN TOOLS
Coef. Std. Err. P [95% Conf.
Interval]
Conventional only
Traditional index 0.015*** 0.003 0.000 0.008 0.022
Modernised index 0.013*** 0.004 0.001 0.005 0.021
Constant -1.594 0.493 0.001 -2.561 -0.627
Social only
Traditional index 0.012** 0.005 0.019 0.002 0.022
Modernised index 0.009 0.006 0.128 -0.003 0.021
Constant -2.799 0.758 0.000 -4.286 -1.313
Hybrid
Traditional index 0.022*** 0.003 0.000 0.015 0.029
Modernised index 0.026*** 0.004 0.000 0.018 0.034
Constant -3.145 0.495 0.000 -4.115 -2.176 Reference category: No Web
Pseudo R2 0.0521
Log likelihood -1026.3932
* p<.1 **p<.05 ***p<.01

14. WEB CAMPAIGN TOOLS
 Conventional
 Traditional and modern indices remain significant
 All parties less likely to engage in conventional campaigns than
Conservatives
 % pop no qualifications negative effect
 Social (small n)
 Traditional campaign index positive effect
 Hybrid
 Both traditional and modern indices positive effects
 Nationalists less likely to engage in hybrid only campaigns than Con,
others no effect
 % pop no qualifications negative effect
 Younger and female candidates also more likely to adopt hybrid
(CCS model)

15. WEB CAMPAIGN BEHAVIOURS
 So it seems like that the kind of campaign
activity engaged in has little impact on the kind
of online campaign tools adopted
 But what about the adoption of online campaign
behaviours?
 Data comes from content analysis of campaign
websites in the NW of England during 2010
campaign
 Addresses three kinds of interactive behaviours
public dialogue, potential dialogue and site-
based interactivity

16. CONTENT ANALYSIS SCHEMA

17. PUBLIC DIALOGUE BEHAVIOURS

18. POTENTIAL DIALOGUE BEHAVIOURS

19. SITE-BASED INTERACTIVITY BEHAVIOURS

20. WEB CAMPAIGN BEHAVIOURS
 But
 Noteasy to analyse these measures individually
 Lack of variation in the sample
 To get around this I created an aggregate
measure of interactivity
 Basedon regression scores from Principal
Components Analysis

21. WEB CAMPAIGN BEHAVIOURS
Variable B (S.E.) Standardised B
Traditional Index .216 (.108)** .204
Modernised Index .127 (.095) .137
Constant 65.923 (14.776)
* p<.1 **p<.05 ***p<.01

22. WEB CAMPAIGN BEHAVIOURS
 BUT
 When other contextual variables are added in
the significance of this disappears
 Only significant result in the wider model
concerns incumbent candidates (much less
interactive) except where they are in marginal
seats (more interactive)
 Different approach to analysis and
incorporate candidate level data

23. INTERVIEW DATA
 Good reason to think that interactivity isn’t driven by
the external factors represented here
 Anecdotal evidence shows candidates often struggle
to justify why they went online
 Online campaigns often seem driven by
circumstantial factors e.g. an affinity for tech
 ‘I don’t like technology for technologies sake, but I do like
what it can do and I enjoy working with technology, just
because it’s a fun way of communicating with people.’
 Candidate for campaign E, traditional/hybrid/interactive
 Surveys do not cover this level of detail

24. CONCLUSIONS – WEB CAMPAIGN TOOLS
 Are campaigns using Web 2.0?
 Yes, very much so
 50% of campaigns report using both social media
and conventional websites
 Use is driven equally by traditional and modern
campaign techniques – intensity
 Use also driven by age, gender, party affiliation and
incumbency
 However – large amounts of variation remain
unexplained

25. CONCLUSIONS – WEB CAMPAIGN BEHAVIOURS
 How are Web 2.0 tools being used?
 Public dialogue very rare
 Admittedly a high threshold for interactivity
 Potential dialogue far more common but harder to
measure
 Site-based interactivity also common, campaigns
able to bring a level of sophistication to sites beyond
brochure-ware
 Haven’t been able to analyse the drivers yet but
interview data suggests that these may be
attitudinal/difficult to measure

26. HYPOTHESES
 H1 traditional campaigns are likely to make more use
of social media and be more interactive NOT
SUPPORTED
 H2 modernised campaigns are likely to make less
use of social media and be less interactive NOT
SUPPORTED
 H3 combined campaigns are likely to make less use
of social media and be less interactive NOT
SUPPORTED
 H4 low activity campaigns are less likely to make use
of web campaign techniques over all SUPPORTED

27. NEXT STEPS - ORGANISATION
 Final question remains, what kind of
campaign organisation is Web 2.0
supporting?
 Networked party models v Managed citizens
 Framing analysis based on CCS data e.g.
attitudes towards democracy or party
organisation and adoption of Web 2.0 tools
 Largely going to be based on interview data
 Already uncovered some interesting case
studies

28. THE END
 Any questions?
 Feedback welcome