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Election 2008: Candidate Web Sites, Propaganda or News?
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Short Description: The Web site of Barack Obama, for example, allows users to create their own ..... Looking across all the candidate biographies, the two most dominant themes ...
Content Inside: 1Election 2008: Candidate Web Sites, Propaganda or News?(A New PEJ study embargoed until Thursday July 12)In 2004, Vermont Governor Howard Dean gained early momentum in his bid for presidency by using a new political tool, his campaign Web site. Setting new standards along the way, he used the Web to help raise roughly $50 million, to communicate directly with supporters through a blog, create a legion of new political activists called "Deaniacs," and even organize gatherings called "meet ups." Three years later, Howard Dean's campaign is best remembered for its sudden end, but his legacy may be something else. In 2007, all 19 candidates for president have Web sites, and blogs are the least of it. Nearly all of the sites now have pages on MySpace, the social networking Web site. Online fundraising has become standard--Barack Obama in the second quarter of 2007 alone raised $10 million on his Web site, a third of his total. Several candidates used their sites to kick off their campaigns, rather than staging an old-fashioned campaign event designed to get press coverage. It all has raised new questions about the evolving communications of American politics and the role of the Web in particular as a way of sidestepping the scrutiny of traditional journalism. How are candidates using their Web sites? To what extent are they trying to evade the traditional media? What images and tested keywords are they promoting, and which ones are they avoiding? To find out, the Project for Excellence in Journalism examined in detail the Web sites of the 19 announced presidential candidates, comparing them on a range of features and studying their language.1 What we found is that one can learn a good deal about individual candidates from these sites. Users can also interact here with the campaigns and other citizens, and even move in many cases to grassroots activity. The emphasis of candidate sites is also more on issues and biography, with little of the horse race and tactical focus that critics decry is an emphasis of traditional media. Rather than bypassing the mainstream media filter, the candidate sites try to exploit the traditional press by using their material selectively in self-serving ways. What is missing is balance, any effort to get below spin--and the ability to compare one candidate with another. Among the key findings:1 Republican Fred Thompson announced his possible intention to announce his bid for president on May 30, 2007, after this study began. Therefore his site is not included in the analysis.
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