Politicians' Use of Websites in the 2010 UK General Election

Reykjavík.
The next speaker at ECPR 2011 is Rosalynd Southern, whose interest is in the UK general election. In the first place, this examined the Web presence of the various political candidates for the six largest parties (2424 in total), from profiles on their party sites through Web-in-a-box pages solutions organised by the parties to personalised sites. This provides an indication of the role the Web plays in each candidate’s campaigning.

Additionally, the study examined candidate presence in various social media spaces (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and blogs), dividing such presence into the four categories of static (not updated), active (using Web 2.0 and regularly updated), open (attempts at interactivity, such as comments), and interactive (evidence of actual engagement with comments and other feedback); this provides a measure of interactivity and engagement.

A final measure was established by sending emails to candidates which pretended to be from a local constituent (hmm, no ethical issues there?); responses from candidates were coded according to response time and content.

These datasets can then be analysed separately and individually to generate a more detailed picture of candidates’ Web use and engagement.