5. 2. Political campaigns on the Internet

This question related to the process of implementation of political campaigns on the Internet.

The characterization of modern societies as “information societies” has become common place; in general, all societies are constituted by communication, as all social processes are performed by exchanging information. But more than ever before, the control of information and communication has become a central determinant of political power and social structure (Bell 1973; Salvaggio, 1989). Success and failure of individual and collective actors alike depend increasingly on their ability to communicate properly. The probably most detailed definition of what political communication actually is comes from Franklin (1995): “The field of political communication studies the interactions between media and political systems, locally, nationally, and internationally” (Franklin, 1995). Franklin argues that political communication focuses on the analysis of:

1. The political content of the media;

2. The actors and agencies involved in the production of content;

3. The effect;

4. The impact of the political system on the media system;

5. The other way around, the impact of the media system on the political system.

From the view of comparative politics, th e focus of political communication is on the connection between politicians, voters and the media.

In representative democracies communication between leaders and led is a necessary condition for the political system to work. Voters need to be informed about the political programs, policy issues and political alternatives presented by the candidates and/or political parties (opinion formation); on the other hand, political representatives need to know the wishes and demands of those whom they are supposed to govern (interest mediation). In modern mass democracies it is political parties that connect government and the governed with one another: “Citizens in modern democracies are represented through and by parties” (Sartori, 1976) which means that communication occurs through political parties and comes from them. Sarcinelli (1998) ascribes a “communicative hinge function” to parties in the democratic process; they perform a reciprocal middleman service in the communication between state agencies and citizens, in both the process of opinion formation and interest mediation. “Parties can best be conceived as a means of communication” (Sartori, 1976). Although parties have been, and still are, the main actors in the political communication process, candidates are now playing an increasing important role. This is due to a range of factors, principal among which are arguably techno logical developments and the rise of television as a visual medium; the personalization of political messages offers voters’ an “information shortcut” in deciphering and making sense of complex policy issues (Popkin 1991)

Although parties are the key organizations linking citizens to government they are by no means the only organizations that engage in political communication. The communicative behavior of NGOs and protest movements has also attracted a lot of scholarly attention, especially with the rise of new ICTs. A number of studies have indicated that the most likely beneficiaries of the new media are loosely organized in protest groups (Boncheck 1995; Bimber 1998). In part, this is because of the relative low cost of the net and the lack of editorial control, which means that fringe campaigns have greater opportunities to voice their concerns and get the message across than they do via the traditional media. Moreover, email and hypertext links make it easier than before to mobilize protest quickly and link together previously unconnected individuals even breaking down traditional barriers of time and space.

When one studies political communication, three actors appear to occupy the center stage – the media, political elites and voters - all of which are dependent upon, and influence one another. Changes and development occurring to one actor naturally then have an influence on the other actors.

The most popular forms of political propaganda on the Internet are:

• E-mail;

• Website;

• Interaction with the media;

• Research;

• Political advertising on the Web (Vershinin, 2001; p. 77);

• Twitter (Conover et al., 2011).

Nevertheless, particularly websites are the most popular type of political communication in web because of several reasons:

• Web site can accommodate any number of materials. There are no time or space limitations;

• You can talk directly to the audience, bypassing the media;

• Possible to achieve significant savings in the delivery of information to all parts of the world;

• Information is easily updated. There is no need to print brochures and other materials;

• The media and other users have access to your materials 24 hours a day, being in any country of the world (Wilcox, 2001; p. 374).

A curious feature of web sites is their ability to recruit supporters and raise funds. Richard Davis (1999) gives data showing that 71% of the political sites "contain recruitment offers, 48% of sites provide an opportunity to become a member of an organization in an online form” (Davis, 1999; p.138 - 139). The Internet as a tool for direct communication allows interested political actors to get “first-hand” information, avoiding the influence of the more traditional technical tools - television, newspapers and magazines. If the candidate is able to meet people online, it means that this candidate has the opportunity to present their message directly thus eliminating the influence of intermediaries that can distort the true meaning of his ideas. Particular interest to American political parties is the fact that a high percentage of the Internet users falls on the so-called "floating voters" who can sway the tipped scales on the election in favor of one party. '"Thus, today the Internet "- is not only the information superhighway, which revolve around the other media, but also a forum that allows candidates to articulate the position of his election program” (Newman, 1999; p. 60).

In such a way, the study of public opinion in the Russian society at the core of this problem is the essence of the second research question in this study.

Answering the second question: “From where do you prefer to receive information about the candidates during the elections?”, 61 respondents (4,6%) preferred to receive this information from the television, 528 respondents (39,4%) from the newspapers, 721 respondents (53,8%) from the Internet and finally 30 respondents (2,2%) didn’t interested in politics. It is remarkable, that total number of people, who didn’t interested in politics is practically the same in both questions. No one among participants chosen “other variant” option. In chapter tree several serious disadvantages were listed. Nevertheless, the Internet is trusted more by the citizens of Russia in selecting candidates for political offices. All seven political parties, registered in Russia, have their own websites. However, according to Foundation For Freedom Of Information of Russian Federation, that published the research - “Political Parties Websites Monitoring” - the quality of this web sites is low (Foundation For Freedom Of Information of Russian Federation, 2012). A group of scientists came to the following conclusions:

• Sites of political parties have a low coefficient of transparency. Thus, placed about a third of socially significant information;

• All the websites of political parties are characterized by low degree of differentiation in the degree of transparency. Thus most open site of a political party scored 39.697% and the least open - 28.691%. The only difference is 11.006%. While on average the rate for other monitoring cycle is more than 60-70%;

• Least illuminated financial information on the websites of political parties;

• Most covered general information;

• Particular attention is paid to the party’s sites individuals (persons).

Political communication is also a focus taken up from a party research perspective. The question here is by and large, how political parties are adapting to the changes and demands the media system and media society is putting towards them. The focus of much of the discussion is on the demise of the mass party and its replacement by new models of organization, showing a shift in focus of the parties away from inward concerns with party members and acitivists towards more outward concerns with voters.

The expanding role of political consultants, computer databases, telephone opinion polling, and the media – the process of professionalization – is seen as reducing the role of parties as mobilizers and conduits for popular participation and opinon. Drawing on the example of the Russian parties, where this type of campaigning is regarded as having reached its zenith, observers warn of the dangers to party relevance and vitality that professionalization represents.

Indeed, one commentator wrote that parties have witnessed nothing less than a «destruction of their status» in recent years (Johnson-Cartee and Copeland 1997: 12).

Not all accounts are so doom-laden, with some authors preferring to talk less normatively about party change rather than party decline as a result of professionalization. The principal approach is to explore the role of parties in the new campaign process, as well as the role of the new campaign process in affecting the parties (Farrell 2006: 123).

The picture of party decline and/or party passivity is problem atic on a number of fronts.

Most obviously, it is clear that parties at some stage must be conscioulsy involved in the uptake of the new way of political communication. It is a process that involves extensive senior-level decision making, organizational reform, and financial muscle – consultants have to be hired, polls and focus groups commissioned, and media training undertaken. Such a change could not simply be foisted on parties, but would require consent. This consent would inevitably be influenced by organizational outlook and capability.

Beyond these logical objections, however, if systemic factors were solely responsible for professionalization then we would expect all parties to be at a similar stage in their use of the techniques. The empirical evidence suggests, however, that there is considerable variance within party systems over the timing and pace of professionalized political communication in general and professionalized campaigning in particular. In the United States, for example, the Republic answere credited with professionalizing their campaign operation at least a decade before the Democrats. Similary, the conservatives in Britian were considered the first exponents of the new campaigning style in the late 1970s, whereas Labour actively resisted them. Finally, in Germany, although the 1998 campaign by the Social Democratic Party (SPD) under the leadership of Gerhard Schröder seemed to mark the new era of professionalized campaigning in German, stirrings were detected in the Christian Democratic Union as early as 1972. Given these objectives, we have argued elsewhere that parties’ role in the process of professionalizing political communication may be more active than has hitherto been recognized (Gibson and Römmele 2001). Relating political communication to the party goals literature, ‘it is evident that parties with vote maximization as their primary goal would be most likely to adopt the new techniques. Major changes to electoral strategy are undertaken to shore up and increase a party’s vote share. Thus, it is the large catch-all type of parties that we would expect to most readily embrace professional campaigning’ (Gibson and Römmele 2001: 36).

There is a young body of literature dealing with these issues (Farrell 2006, Gibson and Römmele 2001, Panebianco 1986, Jun 2005) showing that parties expand and equip themselves organizationally. Party research has shown that due to the growing importance of ‘staying on message’, of organizing the permanent campaign, the party headquarters become more and more important. Due to the growing importance of television the candidate is gaining more importance. The fact that new campaign styles have required political parties to adapt their organizational dynamics as well as their communication strategies does not of itself imply that the parties are somehow weaker as a consequence, but what certainly cannot be disputed is that they have been forced to adapt; standing still was never an option (Farrell 2005:131).

From this it follows that these sites have a high degree of "information personification” (Foundation for Freedom of Information of Russian Federation, 2012).

Based on these findings, it is possible to speak about “media” character of such reliability of the Internet as a source of getting political information about the candidates during the elections, when people take the information from “news portals” or other websites, not related to the specific party or candidate. As well, large gap in the percentage ratio can be seen here between TV and newspapers options (34,8%). As it is possible to see, in the eyes of Russian citizen’s newspapers are more reliable source of information about candidates than television. As well, according to again relatively small percentage of people that not interested in politics it is possible to talk about the fair share of its objectivity.