New Book Explores Online Political Campaigning

By BILL SCHLOTTER

As the 2004 presidential race heats up, President Bush and his challengers will use every means possible to put their political messages before the American electorate.

Campaign strategists who want to make the best use of the world's latest media technology—the Internet—may find a new book by political scientists Bruce Bimber and Richard Davis helpful.

In "Campaigning Online: The Internet in U.S. Elections" (Oxford University), Bimber, an associate professor of political science at UCSB, and Davis, a professor of political science at Brigham Young University, analyze how candidates used the Internet in the 2000 presidential election, what worked, what didn't, and why.

A key finding of the research was that voters did not use candidate Web sites to help them decide for whom to vote. Instead of sampling the sites of all or many of the candidates, most voters went only to the site of their favorite.

"The most important thing we learned is that Web sites tend to reinforce people's partisanship and their preferences," Bimber said.

He said some Internet developers had thought candidate sites and other Web resources could be a reference library where undecided citizens could go to decide for whom to vote. "But it doesn't work that way," Bimber said.

Bimber said candidates should tailor their Web site's content not to win converts but to solidify the support of those already in the fold.

Journalists from the mainstream media were second targets of the 2000 campaign Web sites. "The traditional mass media really have a lot of power to anoint the winner by focusing attention," Bimber said. "So part of the early primary game is convincing journalists to write stories saying the candidate is viable."

Though some suggested that the Internet might supplant traditional media, such as newspapers, radio, and television, Bimber and Davis found in 2000 that old media and new media were complementary. U.S. Sen. John McCain's campaign was a good example.

McCain (R-Ariz.) earned a lot of coverage in the old media when he defeated George Bush in the New Hampshire primary. The heavy coverage was followed by a flood of $1.5 million in contributions in three days via the McCain Web site. McCain's campaign staff convinced reporters that the sudden bonanza of contributions was in itself big news, which earned McCain more time and space in the mainstream media.

"The success of former Vermont governor Howard Dean this year very much echoes what happened with McCain last time around, though Dean has benefited even more from online campaigning," Bimber said.

Another finding of the study is that the Internet does not challenge the mainstream media's control of candidate access to the public. Bimber finds that disappointing.

"It turns out that the Web sites that get the most attention from the public belong to the candidates that get the most attention from the mass media," Bimber said.

One area in which the Internet is serving the public better than the old media is in discussing the issues, Bimber said.

"Issues have increasingly been moved to the side in American politics," Bimber said. "The candidates often ask people to vote for them because of their personal characteristics: I'm a good guy. I'm honest. I'm patriotic. And my opponent is not.

"And the news business tends to emphasize the horse race: Who's ahead, who's behind and what the poll numbers say."

During the 2000 campaign, a relatively small number of voters visited the candidates' Web sites compared to those who saw television advertising.

"About 5 percent of those we surveyed said they had visited George Bush's Web site," Bimber said. "It was about 4 percent for Gore and about 2 percent for Nader."