Abstract
This article contains research findings of the largest (n = 2073) empirical research to date on the structures and the functions of political parties web sites from a political social and communication studies perspective. The methodology used for this research is novel in this research arena and is based on an information architecture approach. The tools used to carry out the analysis are Version 3.5 build 343 of WebLinkValidator and spss. This research is based on the early stages of the political web (1995–2005) and covers a context which pre-dates the emergence of modern social media. We argue however that this work remains scientifically relevant for two main reasons. One is methodological: no other comparable empirical research covering the entire known universe of online political parties activities has been carried out after 2005. The second argument concerns theories on political inclusion worldwide: this research has allowed to spot in 2005 a negative trend towards political exclusion which—as three consecutive Pew Research Centers reports proved in 2008, 2010 and 2016—got stronger, rather than weaker, in parallel to the emergence of social media.
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Notes
- 1.
Dazibao/[Wade-Giles] tatzepao: large-print newspaper hanging on a wall for public reading which became popular again during the Maoist Cultural Revolution in China (see Poon 1978).
- 2.
It would be justified to assume that many of these web properties belong to fringe parties, i.e. organizations that, according to Norris (2000: 6) “identify themselves as party and run candidates, yet lack at least 3% of the elected members of the lower house of the national parliament”.
- 3.
The IT Policy debate is driven by 8 basic groups, suggests Atkinson (2010): cyber-libertarians, social engineers, free marketers, moderates, moral conservatives, old economy regulators, tech companies and trade associations, bricks and mortars.
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Ricci, A., Servaes, J. (2018). E-Democracy. Ideal vs Real, Exclusion vs Inclusion. In: Caballero, F., Gravante, T. (eds) Networks, Movements and Technopolitics in Latin America. Global Transformations in Media and Communication Research - A Palgrave and IAMCR Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65560-4_4
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