Flies Into Spiders: Norwegian Parties On The Web

Flies into spiders? Norwegian parties and the World Wide Web

Paper for IAMCR Conference, Cairo, July 23-28, 2006

Øyvind Kalnes Assistant professor, Faculty of Social Sciences Lillehammer University College, 2626 Lillehammer, NORWAY Telephone: +47 61288052 / +47 61 257245 E-mail: [email protected]

Øyvind Kalnes: Flies Into Spiders _______________________________________________________ 1. INTRODUCTION The growth in internet access has happened almost in tandem with the latest wave of democratisation triggered by fall of the iron 1 curtain . Especially in the 1990s, some scholars interpreted this optimistically as a path towards "cyber democracy", where the internet would be a channel for more active participation from below. More cynical observers saw the internet as an additional instrument for campaigning and propaganda in the hands of political elites. Furthermore, the concept "the digital divide" soon became standard, to describe an uneven advance in internet access and competence, between poor and rich nations, social classes, as well as age groups. This author subscribes to a more dynamic view than these polarised pessimistic vs. optimistic interpretations, which are mere mirror images of each other. Internet access and -competence have – after all - spread rapidly in the population of some countries. Although it is used by relatively few for political purposes even there, it is premature to cynically deny its political potential on the basis of the (unrealistic and) failed predictions of the “cyber democrats”. Political actors, such as parties are still in the learning phase of mastering a “killer application” and those using the internet have not yet learned the role of being a citizen on the web, 2 in addition to the consumer –role . The learning process is certainly worth a study. Can traditional political actors learn to spin their own attractive parts of the web or are they caught in the web of the professional mass media? This article discusses some preliminary data gathered as part of a project about Norwegian political party web sites, and 1

Freedom House estimates the relative share of "free countries" to have increased from 34% in 1985, via 40% in 1995 to 46 in 2005 (Freedom House 2006). 2 After 2000 the Norwegian authorities have focused on developing a national ICT-strategy. However, the dominating perspective is on the population as clients or consumers, not as citizens. The spread of Internet in Norway seems to have coincided with the spread of New Public Management. Bad luck.

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more specifically the parts which are open to the general public . The general election in September 2005 offered an opportunity to look into how the parties used this new media to communicate with their voters. A first sample of eight out of 21 official Norwegian party websites was taken in week 17, April 2005, to get a basis for comparison with the web sites during campaign time. During the last weeks of the campaign (25. August – 11. September) daily snapshots of the websites were added, the party sample now 4 extended to include all eight parties in parliament . The parties and website adress is referred in table 1. A brief overview of the election and the Norwegian party system is provided in the next chapter. Chapter 3 attempts to trace and understand the development over time as processes of organizational learning, before the analysis of the sample of party web sites in chapter 4. Chapter 5 adds some considerations on the systemic effects of party web sites, by asking whether it has pluralizing or cartelising effects on the party system.

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We do not discuss internal part ycommunication, intranets, or other forms of ICT-based communication, such as e-mail. Those interested should read Saglie 2006. 4 Comparative daily data for other media, such as newspapers and television, were gathered in during the same period and will be analysed later on in the project.

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Øyvind Kalnes: Flies Into Spiders _______________________________________________________ 2. PARTIES AND ELECTIONS IN NORWAY Norway is a parliamentary democracy, with general elections held every fourth year. The electoral system is based on the principle of 5 proportional representation (PR) . As a consequence of PR and the persistence of a relatively strong centre-periphery cleavage, the party system is close to what Sartori (1990) calls moderate pluralism 6 , which is multipartyism without centrifugality. The level of political participation and interest has been considered to be relatively high, although in a downward trend as in many established democracies 7 . In the general election 12. September 2005, 7 out 21 competing parties won seats in the Parliament. There were two clear-cut government alternatives, a centre-right alternative based on the ruling government coalition (the Conservative Party, the Liberals and the Christian People's Party) against a centre-left coalition of three opposition parties (the Centre Party, the Labour Party and the Socialist Left Party). Both alternatives clearly had as their strategy to emphasise ideological distance, as well as the personalities of their respective candidates for the post as prime minister. The election proved to be a very close race between these two alternatives. Table 1 reports the results for the 11 parties in our sample.

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Each of the 19 counties constitutes an electoral district with multiple mandates. 150 of the 169 seats in Parliament (Stortinget) are allocated among the party lists using modified St. Laguë. The remaining 19 seats are adjustment seats, to rectify misrepresentation in relation to the number of national votes. However, only parties with more than 4% of the national vote are included in this procedure. 6 A major deviation was the period 1945-1961, when the Labour Party consistently held the majority of seats in Parliament, thus qualifying for the category of pre-dominant party system. 7 77.4% of the voters took part in the most recent general election. Although this was an increase of 1.9% from the 2001 election, it still ranked as the fourth lowest level of participation since 1927 (Statistics Norway 2005).

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______________________________________________ Table 1. Votes (%) in the 2005 election and change from 2001 PARTY AND POSITION

VOTES (%)

Web address

Red Electoral Alliance

01,2 (+0,0)

www.rv.no

Socialist Left Party

08,8 (-3,7)

www.sv.no

Labour Party

32,7 (+8,4)

www.dna.no

Centre Party

06,5 (+0,9)

www.sp.no

Christian People's Party

06,8 (-5,6)

www.krf.no

Liberal Party

05,9 (+2,0)

www.venstre.no

Coast Party

00,8 (-0,9)

www.kystpartiet.no

Pensioners' Party Right:

00,5 (-0,1)

www.pensjonistpartiet.no

Conservative Party

14,1 (-7.1)

www.hoyre.no

Progress Party

22,1 (+7,4)

www.frp.no

Democrats*

00,1 (+0,1)

www.demokratene.no

Other parties**

00,5

Left:

Centre:

* The Democrats held one seat during the previous period as Jan Simonsen, who was elected on the Progress Party platform, was excluded from this party and joined the Democrats. In the election the Democrats, got approximately 1000 votes less than 2 parties outside the sample (Christian Coalition and The Environmental Party The Greens), putting it as number thirteen in terms of votes ** 10 parties with a total of 12 367 votes - or 0,47% of all votes cast - are not in the sample, and included in the category "Other parties ".

Source: Odin (2005), http://odin.dep.no/krd/html/valgresultat2005/bs5.html Both the Conservatives and the Christian People's Party got historically low shares of the votes, while the leading opposition party (Labour) managed a highly successful comeback.

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Øyvind Kalnes: Flies Into Spiders _______________________________________________________ Furthermore, the Progress Party, with its populist anti-system profile did very well. A leading analysist (Aardal 2006) asks how it was possible for the governing Centre-Right coalition to lose what should have been "a walk-over election". The Norwegian economy was doing very well, and the United Nations had pointed to Norway as the best country in the world to live in. But the only governing party that did well in the election was the junior partner; the Liberals. Somehow, Norwegian voters had been persuaded to punish its two senior partners severely, and accept the criticism of the opposition alternative. One might attribute it to a gloomy 8 national character , or an uneven distribution of campaign skills. Anyhow, the outcome was the formation of a majority centre-left government, led by the Labour Party's Jens Stoltenberg. 9

3. FLIES LEARNING TO BECOME SPIDERS? 3.1. Killer applications and hype cycles Political parties are open organisations interacting with increasingly complex and changing environments, involving voters, other parties, the state and the media. In this case a new and innovative 10 communication technology – or “killer application” - is involved, 8

A bemused British journalist visiting Norway at the time wrote in the Daily Mail: a persistent gloominess pervades - a sense of discontent that prompts one to wonder just what it is that people need to be happy....Norway has much going for it and the Norwegians are, on the whole, beautiful, prosperous and healthy. Millions of people would love to have what they have. But I've seen more joy and laughter in desperately impoverished villages in Africa than I did in Oslo. (Foreman 2005) 9 Please note that this chapter contains reflections that are not fully developed nor yet properly incorporated into the analysis. 10 The term “killer application ” originally referred to data programs that were perceived to be so valuable that they became decisive for investment in hardware and operating systems. The World Wide Web has come be regarded as the killer application of the Internet. As indicated by O'Reilly (1999) web sites may be regarded as a new breed of "information applications," or "infoware.

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______________________________________________ containing both opportunities and threats to the organisation. The introduction of new technologies also implies a steep, and not necessarily rational, learning curve. The concept of hype cycles, developed by the Gartner Group (http://www.gartner.com/pages/story.php.id.8795.s.8.jsp) suggests a path of development, which may well be applicable to political parties on the web. This path describes the introduction and development of the technology per se. The X-axis refers to the maturing of the technology over time, while Y-axis refers to the attention and expectations directed at the technology. As implied by the concept, there is not necessary any linear relation between the two. Instead a 5-step cycle is suggested, where (1) the technology becomes available, although still underdeveloped (Technology Trigger), (2) leading to high media visibility and the start of investments (Peak of Inflated Expectations), which in turn leads to (3) a collapse in media attention (or hype) (Trough of Disillusionment), followed by (4) a period where one learns to take advantage of - and further develop - the technology (Slope of Enlightenment), ending in (5) the Plateau of Productivity. Hype, then is a point where the amount of attention exceeds the maturity of the technology. At the disaggregate level, different organisations (such as parties) may choose to introduce the technology at different stages in the cycle. Some parties may be type A-adopters, while others may be type B- or C-adopters.

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Øyvind Kalnes: Flies Into Spiders _______________________________________________________ Figure 1. The Gartner Group's Hype Cycle

The history of Norwegian parties on the web resembles the different stages of this sequence. At the time of introduction of the WWW around 1994 the official main bodies of the party organisation showed little interest in establishing web sites. Nevertheless, Norwegian party web sites started to appear well before the general election of 1997, mostly as the result of enthusiastic individuals in the party administration who had taken a 11 special interest in ICT . One exception may be the Liberal Party, which had ambitions of implementing ICT on a grand scale (Saglie 2006:16). But the 1997-election was by no means an internet election. The internet as a political instrument was still regarded as something for "nerds", if you like. Early type A adoption was very modest, despite some media visibility/hype (Note: Media hype has to be checked more thoroughly). But by the next general election of 2001, the internet was accessible for the majority of voters and 20 11

Most of them are still accessible, although often in fragments, in the Internet Archive http://www.archive.org

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______________________________________________ out of 22 registered Norwegian parties had established their own website (Hestvik 2004:235). The largest Norwegian newspaper declared this to be “the great web election” (VG, 14. August 2001). In that sense, most parties the appear as “late” type A adopters, located near “the peak of inflated expectations”. Still, what is reported by Hestvik (2004:236ff), indicate scepticism and lack of any web strategy within the party organisations. The “killer application” was immature in the sense that the political parties had not implemented them fully, and the audience was neither as large nor as sophisticated as some cyber optimists would have hoped for. Saglie (2006:9) reports for instance that the Centre Party's web site at the time was known to be a "disaster". Furthermore, some parties were so frustrated over the lack of a serious participation in their interactive web forums that they started to close them down (Hestvik 2004, Saglie 2006). “The trough of disillusionment” may therefore be an appropriate description of the situation after the 2001-election. Still, as observed by the Gartner Group, the end of the hype does not necessary mean the end of investment. The development in internet access and –competence in the population during the same period seems to confirm a sounder basis on the user side: Table 2. Internet access in Norway

2000 2005

13-19 86 96

Age groups (%) 20-39 40-59 79 69 91 89

6019 50

Source: xxx Among voters less than 60 years old the "digital divide" has almost disappeared, although a significant intergenerational "divide" persists as only 50% of voters that are 60 years or older have Internet access. On the other hand, it is in this age group that

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Øyvind Kalnes: Flies Into Spiders _______________________________________________________ Internet access has expanded the most. Furthermore, assuming that the persons with access in 2000 have continued to use the Internet, they would by 2005 have gathered considerable experience and competence. In the period leading up to the recent election in 2005 at least some of the parties developed what might be classified as an ICT-strategy and integrated ICT and the web as a "normal" part of the party's organisation (Saglie 2006:xx). An informal survey conducted among the Norwegian parties early in 2005 revealed that they would invest more time and money than before on the World Wide Web (Propaganda 2005a). Hence, most parties appear as type B-adopters and party websites may be on their way into the slope of enlightenment. Inter-party differences would then be accounted for by variations in available resources to invest in new technologies. In general Norwegian parties get very generous government and municipal grants each year, on top of private incomes from donations, membership fees, lotteries etc. The total incomes of the political parties in 2004 have been estimated (NOU 2004) to be 504 12 million Norwegian Kroner ($75 mill. ). Public grants have mainly been based on the number of votes in the most recent election. According to the new party law (Lovdata 2005), which entered into force in 2006, 10% of the grants will be distributed as a basic support grant. Still, a lower threshold of either at least one elected representative, or 2.5% of the votes in national elections (4% in local elections), disqualifies smaller parties from this basic grant. As for private incomes, once more size matters. The seven parties with more than 2.5% of the vote in 2001 had an estimated total income of between 100 (the Labour Party) and 10 million NKR (the Liberals) in 2004. Their budgets for the 2005 election campaign ranged from about 50 million NKR (7,5 mill US$) on, ranging from 16 (the Labour Party) to 2 million (the Liberals) NKr (Propaganda 2005b). In short, the resources available for hiring professional staffs and/or do outsourcing were formidably skewed in favour of the larger parties. 12

All estimates in $ is based upon the average exchange rate for 2004, 1 $=6,7372 NKR, as reported by the Bank of Norway.

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______________________________________________ 3.2. Political factors The Gartner Group-model focus on some obvious factors; the actual presence of an application or technology that triggers the development and matures over time into actual usability, as well as the less rational fear of appearing to the market place as “old fashioned” (i.e. hype). Still, these factors are not sufficient and not specific enough to account for the development of party web sites. There are three long-term political developments that were necessary to motivate political parties, besides available technology and “hype”. The first is “political dealignment” (Dalton 1988), which has been a trend in Norway since the 1980s, as in most established democracies. Part of this phenomenon is a diminishing party identity or partisanship, illustrated by the voters’ tendency to shift party from election to election and often make last-moment13 decisions . The number of voters that decided who to vote for during the campaign has increased from around one fifth (21% in 1985) to almost half of the voters (47% in 2001) (Aardal 2003a: 13ff). In other words, party strategists knew that substantial parts of the electorate are now influenced by the media and campaign activity, rather than long term partisanship. In the 2005-campaign marketing of party candidates and issues for undecided voters was particularly vital, as the race for majority was open to the very end. This brings us to the second development, the control over the mass media. Electoral campaigns have become more and more media campaigns, conducted through TV, newspapers and radio, channels over which politicians and political parties gradually have lost control (Aardal et al.:17ff, Allern 2001: 125ff, Bjørklund 1991). 13

During the elections from 1993 through 2001 only 56-57% voted for the same party as in the previous election (Aardal 2003b:34ff). Preliminary data from the 2005-election indicate that this trend only strengthened, loyalty now down to only 52% (Aardal 2006). Furthermore, the tendency for the youngest voters to abstain from voting increased substantially from 1997 to 2001, while even the oldest voters became more volatile (Aardal 2003b:34ff).

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Øyvind Kalnes: Flies Into Spiders _______________________________________________________ Until the 1970s most newspapers had a formal and/or ideological affiliation to one of the political parties. While certain sympathies may still be detectable, there is now a stress on independence, impartiality and distance. As for TV and radio, there never were such affiliations in the first place. These media have evolved from a passive neutrality towards critical independence, as well as gone from a situation of state monopoly to competition between state and private channels. Hence, it is the actors of the mass media that that sets the agenda, interpret and intermediate political communication, as well as set the premises for the form and 14 contents of this communication . Politicians have to adapt (more or less successfully) to these demands, to gain access and win sympathy. The third “development” is still more of a potential than a reality. If the present near universal and increasingly competent population of internet users could be reached directly, as (undecided) voters without the filtering of the mass media, through party web sites. Presently, there is a basic necessary condition that is not met. As indicated by Saglie and Vabo's (2005:166ff) analysis of data from the local elections of 2003, the average net surfer simply 15 do not use the internet for political purposes . Compared to TV or newspapers, internet probably still probably was marginally important to the decisions of most voters in 2005. On the other hand, the group of undecided and surfing voters, may be large enough to settle a close race between coalition alternatives or seal the fate of minor parties. In that respect party strategists could no longer afford to bypass the option of setting up attractive web sites. 3.3. Institutional factors So far in the discussion, parties have been treated as like-minded vote-maximising actors reacting upon similar stimuli in their environment. However, I believe it is not only a rational choice 14

TV-advertising for political parties is not allowed in Norway. While 79% of the respondents indicated they had access to the internet, only 19% had used the internet to find information on the local election. 15

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______________________________________________ matter of strategic adaptation, under the uncertainty of complex and unstable circumstances. Adaptation of new technologies takes place in the shadow of the party as an institution. Parties are institutionalised actors, impregnated with their own traditions, history, ideologies and internal power struggles. They embody norms and values, established routines and relations, often not even reflected in any formal structure. As argued in a recent review article by Gunther and Diamond (2005), the established "party types" are neither completely consistent with each other nor cover all significant variations in party organisation. However, for now I will draw on some of these types, and especially the mass party, the catch-all party and the cartel party. Heidar and Saglie (2003b) comment that it is remarkable how most of the major Norwegian parties have stuck with the "mass party" model identified by Maurice Duverger (1954). Duverger's "mass party" captured the evolution of a party organisation tailored to the needs of mobilising and communicating with the huge electorate, which was the consequence of mass enfranchisement. Communication was closed in the sense that it was highly ideological and directed at distinct social classes or groups. It was inclusive in the sense that it sought to mobilise the electorate as active party members. It was mediated through partycontrolled channels, such as party meetings, party newspapers etc. The local party branch and member participation was important for the party as a whole. Certain changes, as identified by "the catch-all-party"model (Kirchheimer 1966), took place as class conflicts and other cleavages became less salient and party leaders realised they could not win a majority on the basis of ideological appeals. In other words, parties started to compete about voters, and voters started to choose between competing parties. Selection of issues and leaders well adapted to attract non-partisan voters, as well as the attention of the media, became a central strategy. Member participation and local involvement became less important, beyond showing support for official candidates, while a professional PRapparatus became vital. The "new politics"-parties on the left and right have 12

Øyvind Kalnes: Flies Into Spiders _______________________________________________________ puzzled party theorists. There is not any agreement as to the deeper structural changes behind their appearance or how to classify these parties. According to Kitschelt (1990), participation as a value in itself has led to a left-libertarian party type, emphasising internal democracy and participation, but much looser and less closed off than the mass party. There has been much discussion on the character of new right parties, as they are a disparate and changing entity. Ignazi (1996) observes that the parties on the right did not exhibit anything similar to the new left, rather what he called a "caesaristic profile", referring to the charismatic entrepreneurs of these parties. What the Socialist Left Party and the Progress Party appear to have in common is less weight upon party apparatus, members or social classes and more upon communicating with citizens/voters in general. As such, they resemble a network model more than the mass party model. But the differences seems to be huge in terms of citizen involvement, with the Socialist Left emphasising “participatory democracy” and the Progress Party “competitive democracy” (Pateman 1970). Following a similar line of logic, Saglie suggests a split between "idealism" and "realism", and between "member party" and "open party" models. The logical next step would be to suggest a four-way table of party models. Table 3. Party Models

REALISM (Competitive democracy)

CLOSED (Members) 1 (Cadre party*)

IDEALISM (Participatory democracy)

3 (Mass party)

OPEN (Voters/citizens) 2 (Catch-all/New Right Party) 4 (New Left Party)

* The Cadre Party refers to the elitist/personal pre-massenfranchisement parties and are not considered relevant in the

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______________________________________________ discussion here This gives us a foundation for linking institutional variations with variations in the contents and designs of party web sites. Perhaps also the timing and volume of investment in web sites, as “open” parties will have to rely more on appealing to the electorate, while closed (mass) parties rely on the tradition of direct participation via the local party branch. 3.4. The emergence of an independent (sub)field in party politics? The discussion in 3.3. assumes new technology will be adapted to the existing party organisational model, without transforming it in any revolutionary way. It simply helps the parties "... do the things they traditionally do, only more quickly and efficient" (Ward et al. 2003). In such an interpretation the use of ICT will reflect existing differences between parties. An alternative interpretation is that ICT-technology will transform parties into some form of "cyber parties". In other words, the technology does not merely act as a trigger or an instrument, but may lead to a new convergence, quite different from the old "mass party"-convergence. This immediately brings forth the following questions: If ICT acts as an independent dimension, which party type will it lead to, and which existing party type will be more or less adaptable? Helen Margetts’ (2001) version of "the cyber party" brings the category 4/New Left-case in table 3 to mind. The party has completely adapted to the new internet technology, and traditional party organisation more or less "withers away", as there is no longer any need for it. Party leaders can communicate directly with voters and do not need members for campaigning, nor a large party bureaucracy to administer party activity. Furthermore, the party leadership can bypass the independent and critical mass media, which filter the communication with voters. Or rather citizens, as it sees the communication as symmetrical, in the sense that voters are active participants in a dialogue facilitated by the new technology. Being the “virtual twin” of the "new left"-party makes it is difficult to judge on dependence/independence, as it supports an 14

Øyvind Kalnes: Flies Into Spiders _______________________________________________________ already established party model. A stronger test of the relationship would be a transformation of parties in the other categories into a “cyber party” (in the Margetts-version). A "cyber party" that is supposed to bring forth new possibilities of easy and direct participation from the enlightened masses is the optimistic version of the independence scenario. A more pessimistic version points towards organisational and democratic decay, the rule of an autonomous elite and passive, atomized masses, which may be uncomfortable close to what Michels called oligarchy (Michels 1968). In the political "cyberspace" the masses' "participation" through their PCs, will be of a highly individualised nature, given the lack of face-to-face party meetings and discussions. All perspectives so far have one thing in common; the assumption of an increasingly integrated development between ICT and party, regardless of the direction of the relationship or the nature of ICT-adoption. Still, we cannot disregard the possibility that the low integration we have traced in the early phase persists and develops further, despite increasingly stronger adoption of the technology. Støkken's (1998) application of Bordieu’s concepts of "social fields" and "-subfields" in her analysis of distant education in Norway may provide a point of departure. These fields are constituted by actors with close internal relations with each other. Seen from vertical - or hierarchical - viewpoint, party websites is a "subfield" in "party politics", which may be a subfield within the field of "politics". Of course, this form of vertical integration within the field of party politics is what constitutes the basic assumption of the previous approaches. An alternative assumption to start with is the horizontal viewpoint, and (the rather trivial) observation that a subfield of ICTbased political communication are related to other ICT-based subfields, within for instance commercial marketing, mass media corporations, education, public administration etc. Støkken characterises subfields as 'independent social micros-cosmoses, each with different logics....what is considered important within a subfield may (often) appear incomprehensible to those outside the field" (Støkken 1998:26). Hence, party websites as a project 15

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______________________________________________ incorporates the two fields of "party politics" and ICT, containing different actors and probably different logics. Furthermore, as Støkken suggests (for distant education), there may well be a segregation between the two, as party leaders and – staff may dedicate little attention to ICT. The actors within the subfield of part websites/ICT may therefore gain autonomy from intervention, especially if they develop some form of "symbolic capital", the recognition that the actors know the relevant codes and norms of the field. In organisational theory "institutionalised standards" are referred to as prescriptions on how to organise organisational activity, more often than not limited to areas of related activity within the organisation, as in our case producing and maintaining party websites (DiMaggio og Powell 1983, Røvik 1998). Isomorphism refers to the tendency for certain organisational form elements to be established as "best practice" within a field, subsequently leading to organisational homogeneity or convergence. Thus, similar standards for development and contents of party websites in the ICT-field may lead to convergence among different types of parties, although not as a consequence of rational or enlightened choice from party leaders and –strategists. (Note: The discussion in this sub-chapter must be followed up by more data and analysus)

4. PARTY WEBSITES IN THE 2005 CAMPAIGN The party websites that were watched during the 2005 election campaign are listed in table 1 on page 2. As the material is not yet fully analysed the following presentation may appear as somewhat incomplete, but some interesting tendencies are revealed regarding the discussion in chapter 3. 4.1 Web site development and management Before the start of the 2005 election campaign all 8 parties in Parliament and most of the registered non-parliamentary parties had established a website. Furthermore, four parties (Socialist Left Party, Progress Party, Liberals and Centre Party) developed small, 16

Øyvind Kalnes: Flies Into Spiders _______________________________________________________ self-contained and temporary election web sites during the 16 campaign . The latter’s site was so similar in design and contents to the ordinary site, that it is doubtful whether it should qualify as more than a specialised subsection. It is interesting that the election sites belonged to parties associated with “new politics” exclusively (Socialist Left and Progress Party) or to some degree (Liberals). But regarding the ordinary web sites, resources (indicated by party size), seems to be the decisive factor regarding the strategy for development and management of the web sites. All major parties (Note: Check if SLP changed) had chosen a mixed strategy, where the development of the web sites was outsourced to commercial enterprises. All of these enterprises were involved in a varied portfolio of websites, counting business enterprises, interest organisations and public administration among their customers. It should be noted that none of the parties used the same firm. The parties' maintenance and provision of day-today content were done by a professional editorial staff in the party, with some internal IT-support. The editorial staffs were attached to the Information department of the party, very often the head of this apartment taking on the role as web chief editor. Regarding the non-parliamentary parties (Note: No data yet for the Red Electoral Alliance website), the Democrats and the Pensioners' Party had some basic assistance from a commercial firm in setting up their website. None of them reported the type of formal web editorial staff or ICT-support, which all the parliamentary parties had (Note: No data on the Coast Party yet). I would not consider it a daring proposition to suggest that a rich, easily navigable and frequently updated content is a winner, in terms of attracting visitors. Regarding quality and quantity in general, there were differences among the parliamentary parties. But the major divide appeared to be whether the party was represented in parliament or not, and whether they could afford 16

One interesting development was the web site “Nytt flertall” (New Majority) (http://www.nyttflertall.no/), where a number of Norwegian celebrities (actors, musicians, authors) stated their support of the centerleft government coalition alternative, and the Labour party in particular.

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______________________________________________ professional support in design and maintenance. Except for the Coast party, all of the parliamentary parties had well designed, 17 complex and huge websites delivered by professional firms . This indicates that above a financial threshold, parties choose to go for professionalisation, combining outsourcing and professional staff. Idealist do-it-yourself solutions are probably no longer an option, as the technology has gotten more complex and the amount of information increased dramatically. Furthermore, the mix of outsourced development and professional internal management indicate an integrated solution (Note: Data on the outsourcing process has to be checked). This impression is strengthened by the fact that by 2005 the web sites of all the parliamentary parties (Note: Check Coast Party), incorporated the sites for local party branches within a common framework and an 18 almost seamless design . The non-parliamentary parties’ web sites mainly contained only links to local party websites, which varied 19 strongly as to content, size, complexity and content . 4.2. Party profile As noted in chapter 3.1. almost half of the voters have become notoriously unfaithful to the parties, shifting from election to election between parties and/or abstaining from voting. However, this also means that there still is a significant partisanship group with a stronger attachment to the party and its values. Obviously, a successful party will manage to cater to both. The party web site would therefore be an instrument to help establish "ownership" 17

The Conservatives and the Labour Party had the largest sites, followed by the Socialist Left Party and the Progress Party, and then the Centre Party. A robot scan conducted in week 17 in 2005 revealed that all of them had several thousand internal url's within their website, the Centre Party being the smallest with 3745 url's. The three non-parliamentary parties were in the range from 278 to 486 internal URL's. E-mail links and external links were not counted. 18 The Progress Party appeared to be a slight deviation, as some local branches had sites with their own design outside the party domain 19 The Pensioners Party main web site contained some local branches' sites, within the same framework, domain hierarchy and design.

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Øyvind Kalnes: Flies Into Spiders _______________________________________________________ over issue-areas large voter groups feel strongly about, as well as maintain an overarching value- (if not ideological) profile. (Note: Systematic day-to-day comparisons of web sites not yet done). Except for the Pensioners' Party, none of the parties seemed to go exclusively for one particular group (or class) through their websites. But a cluster of core party issues, forming a party profile, could still be detected for most of them. For instance the Centre Party focused on regional issues, the Democrats on immigration and "national values", the Conservatives on business and taxation and the Socialist Left Party on the environment. In other words, a party tendency, in terms of value based standpoints on different issues could be detected by users. As the election campaign heated up, the two government alternatives became clearly visible on the party websites. The site contents of the six coalition parties, reveal two tendencies, the first being the extreme care taken not to stigmatise prospective coalition partners, the second the tough polemics directed against the parties belonging to the other coalition alternative. The Conservatives, for instance, continually warned against “the red danger”, while Labour Party warned against the “new poverty” inherent in the centre-right coalitions policies. The smaller parties, being outside both alternatives, consequently profiled opposition to all established parties, whether from a Christian-conservative viewpoint or from a revolutionary viewpoint. Their profile was also more exclusive, in being anti-business (the Red Electoral Alliance), anti-immigrant (the Democrats) or advocates of a single group (the Pensioners' Party). In the absence of strong parties and partisanship, combined with independent mass media, candidate images become important instruments, besides issue ownership. As noted in the comments on the persistence on the mass party model in the older parties, this is less important in Norway than for instance the USA 20 . Besides, there is no strict evidence of any causality here, as party sympathy may easily translate into leader sympathy, and there is no 20

When Kirchheimer formulated his famous thesis about the "catch-allparty" in 1966, Norway was one the cases where the mass party was said to still be the dominant form.

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Øyvind Kalnes: Flies into Spiders

______________________________________________ guarantee that leadership popularity translate into party popularity (Aardal & Narud 2003). What we know from a campaign survey is that the leaders of the Labour Party (Stoltenberg) and the Socialist Left Party (Halvorsen), and the pair of old and new leader in the Progress Party (Hagen and Jensen) were judged most positively by the voters (MMI/Dagbladet 11. September 2005). We also know that the positive image of the Socialist Left-leader did not translate into electoral success for the party. Compared to the traditional mass media, the party and its viewpoints were put on display more than individual politicians on the web sites (Note: To be quantified). Of course, they were far from absent. The pattern from the front pages of the websites appeared to be that the party leader was always present with a picture and a statement on an issue, but never in a form that dominated the page. Leading politicians were also given ample space for speeches and comments inside the site, in text or as "talking heads" in downloadable videos. The deviations were the Red Electoral Alliance and the Progress Party, in opposite directions. In the former case there were no pictures at all of any of their leaders and most statements were kept depersonalised. In the latter case, the party leader appeared more often than for the other parties. Furthermore, in the four specialised election web sites, individual leaders and candidates were pushed to the foreground, presenting short messages on different issue areas. “The new politics”-characteristics of some of these parties may be an explanation, as the party itself is less dominant than in the mass party model. But even in this case it is hard to say that personality dominated over party, at least in terms of quantity. 4.3. Who are the target groups? Party web sites cannot compete with other types of media in terms of getting the voters attention. Data from the parties on the number of actual visitors from the election of 2005 is not analysed yet. An indicator may be the Christian People's Party reporting 8000 visitors in an average week in 2004 and that the number of visitors tripled from an average of 3000 in 2003 to 21000 during the local 20

Øyvind Kalnes: Flies Into Spiders _______________________________________________________ election campaign the same year. For a party with almost daily exposure on TV, on the radio and in the main newspapers, the internet is still the little brother, in terms of reaching the voters at large. Given these relatively small number of visitors, combined with the level of sophistication in, as well as control of, information on party websites an alternative interpretation of is viable. A large number of these relatively few visitors may be important in the formation of voters' opinions, as journalists and 21 members/campaigners . By providing rich and easily navigable content tailored specific for journalists, parties may easier get their attention (and sympathy?). The differences between the major parties in this respect seemed insignificant. All the parliamentary parties, but none of the others (Note: Check Red Electoral Alliance again), provided content in specific sections for the media. The contents were a mix of promotional material (videos, logos, pictures), as well as presentations of leading politicians and the most important party documents. Providing a "better" service to the media may of course favour the parliamentary parties. On the other hand, specific media sections on the major web sites will to a certain extent also be a necessity in guiding journalist around in a large and complex structure. Anyhow, this indicates that the parties were aware of the traditional mass media and found web sites a useful channel to distribute tailored content. The mass party has a particular focus upon communicating with its members, rather than the media or voters in general. The reverse applies for the catch-all party and the new politics-party. All the parliamentary parties in the sample, plus the Red Electoral Alliance, had closed off members-only intranets. It should be remarked that the Socialist Left Party is a special case, as their member web was open for all, through a link on the main page. This is said to reflect a conscious choice to be as a open and inclusive as possible (Saglie 2006:11). However, Saglie's (2006:10ff) data 21

That the "quality" of the visitors and the information may balance in terms of the still relatively low "quantity at this point represent merely a hypthesis, as I have no data on this yet.

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Øyvind Kalnes: Flies into Spiders

______________________________________________ indicate that the intranets are not important for ordinary members, with the possible exception of the Liberals and Conservatives (Note: Need more data on this). According to Saglie (2006:13), e-mail is the prime ICT-based instrument for internal discussion and dialogue. A temporary conclusion might be that the open parts of the web sites also serve as an important channel for party members and campaigners, both as an information bank and as a source of promotional material. 4.4. Modes of communication on the web sites Internet technology is flexible, and can be applied to further several types of communication. Unilateral communication is the more or less sophisticated delivery of party documents, promotional material, candidate biographies, speeches etc. to the web user. Bilateral communication allows the individual user to participate on a one-to-one basis, by making donations, sending e-mails etc. The multilateral form of communication allows an open or closed collective of users to participate, through exchange of viewpoints in web site forums, such as chat groups, blogs, bulletin boards etc. Regarding use of communication (see models in table 3), the catch-all party and in particular a new right-party, could be expected to be the least focused on the multilateral form and most on the unilateral form. On the other hand, the new left party, with its participatory values and open party organisation would focus on interactivity, and multilateral communication in particular. The mass party model also implies participatory ideals, but with focus on the members. Access to participate in the multilateral forms would therefore be expected to be closed off. The unilateral form seemed to be the by far dominant mode of communication, and is still expanding through increasing amounts of material and sophisticated forms of navigation. There was a distinct division between parliamentary and nonparliamentary parties in the amount of material, and the sophistication of its presentation. The material was dominated by text, rather than graphics or multimedia. But the parties varied significantly as to the quantity of multimedia content. While the 22

Øyvind Kalnes: Flies Into Spiders _______________________________________________________ non-parliamentary parties had nothing at all, the Conservative Party clearly had embraced multimedia the most. But not even this party can be characterised as innovative or focused on multimedia. Its multimedia section consisted merely of a series of video speeches from various party figures. Some video speeches/interviews could be found on the websites of the Labour Party and the Socialist Left Party. The Progress Party and Centre Party had even less multimedia content. Overall, multimedia on the ordinary websites was sparsely implemented and resembled the one-way broadcasting of TV or radio, more than a new technology capable of interactivity. On the other hand, multimedia clearly was the platform of the four specialised electoral web sites mentioned earlier, through dominant use of Flash and/or videos (WebTV). With the exception of the Centre Party, these sites appeared as little more than advanced electronic leaflets or would-be TVcommercials. Bilateral communication necessitates interactive elements on the websites. E-banking and e-commerce technology allow members and sympathisers to express support through donations 22 and shopping party effects on-line . This could be of special importance for the smaller parties, to compensate for lack of government financial support. However, only three parties had facilities for making donations on-line (the Conservatives, the Socialist Left Party and the Democrats), with the Conservatives providing the most visible and flexible arrangement (Note: Based on data from late April 2005, recheck with data from August). Likewise, just three parties had established a web shop, to sell party effects 23 such as buttons, cups, t-shirts etc. The Labour Party and the Conservative Party had established complete shops, while the Democrats advertised some items that could be ordered by e-mail. Most important and simplest, in terms of bilateral communication, 22

. It may be contestable to classify this as bilateral or interactive communication. But it contains interactivity in the sense that web users can send information upwards, which the party registers or acts upon. 23 The Labour Party was also preparing the establishment of an e-lottery in late April 2005. Check it.

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Øyvind Kalnes: Flies into Spiders

______________________________________________ is opportunities for contact via e-mail. All parties provided a general party e-mail address on their front pages, and in some instances also an e-mail-form to make the process even easier (the Conservatives, the Socialist Left Party and the Progress Party). Furthermore, the e-mail addresses of individual politicians in the party leadership and parliament, and administrative staff in party headquarters and parliament were easily accessible on the websites 24 . In contrast to the two other forms, the opportunities for multilateral communication were rather sparse. As reported by Hestvik (2004) and Saglie (2006), many parties had ambitions in this direction and established open discussion fora on their websites during the first era of cyber optimism. But these forums were mostly closed down as early as before the 2001-election, due to low activity, harassments and lack of sufficient time to survey or participate in these forums. In 2005 only the Labour Party, the Socialist Left Party and the Liberals had some ambitions of multilateralism left. None of the other parliamentary parties had any visible applications for chat, discussion or posting opinions, at least not in the open areas of their web sites. The Labour Party's web site contained an open discussion group, easily visible and accessible for all, but activity appeared to be low. The Socialist Left 25 Party's forum was part of the open intranet , while the Liberal's forum (http://venstre.blogs.com) was not easily visible for the casual visitor. The three non-parliamentary parties provided rather simplistic solutions, which nonetheless were more than most parliamentary parties offered. The Red Electoral Alliance and the Democrats had arranged for posting of questions, which representatives of the party leadership were supposed to answer. The Pensioners' Party had a forum where contributions received per e-mail were posted. Judging by what was visible in the respective forums the average activity was limited to less than a question or

24

The one exception was the leader of the Pensioners' Party, for whom there were no e-mail address. 25 A contradiction in terms?

24

Øyvind Kalnes: Flies Into Spiders _______________________________________________________ contribution per day (Note: Activity data from April 2005. Recheck for changes). A final peculiarity regarding multilateralism; blogging became the latest fashion on the web shortly before the election campaign and some party enthusiasts rapidly established their own “blogs”. Blogging was probably both regarded as a means to both appear more "modern" than your competitors, as well as to communicate directly and interactively with the voters. Some politicians jumped on the bandwagon, mostly the leaders of party youth organisation (Liberals, Conservatives and Labour). The exception was the blogspot of the Socialist Left Party leader Kristin Halvorsen. This was undoubtedly the most profiled, especially as her party was the party emphasising modern ICT-technology and direct interaction the most. It opened in the autumn of 2004, but Halvorsen soon was unable to find sufficient time to follow it up properly. It ended in late spring 2005 as what a major daily called a "blog-flop" (Dagbladet 11. June 2005). As for the other blogs, the Labour and Conservative "blog" lacked interactivity, and only the blogspot of leader of the Liberal youth organisation can be characterised as being a successful blog during the election year. To sum up, the parties have tried their hand at multilateral communication on their own websites and apparently lowered their ambitions considerably. They cannot claim to stimulate debate through multilateral communication, as most of the contents are 26 unilateral . There are some variations. The Socialist Left Party, followed by the Liberals and the Labour Party, has been the most enthusiastic multilateralists, as could be expected from their party models. It should also be noted that during the campaign this form of communication between politicians and voters were very much alive on the web sites of (mostly) the established mass media, which frequently invited party leaders to write blogs, to chat and

26

As mentioned earlier, the parliamentary parties (plus the Red Electoral Alliance), all had closed off members-only intranets. Some debate and multilateral communication may take place here, but activities of ordinary party members are reported to be low.

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Øyvind Kalnes: Flies into Spiders

______________________________________________ have net meetings with their readers/visitors. This provided an 27 open and unfiltered interaction between candidates and voters . But regarding the mode of communication on the party web sites, the variations have become sufficiently small to diagnose the development as convergence around unilateralism. The most ambitious expectations towards multilateralism (or “cyber democracy”) seem to have been lowered considerably, while sceptics and late starters have accepted that the internet may be a highly useful (unilateral) instrument. 5. A PARTY SYSTEM ON THE WEB? Sartori's (1990) classic model of the party system differentiated between four main types of party systems in liberal democracies; the predominant party model, the two party model, moderate pluralism and extreme pluralism. Broadly speaking, Sartori used two dimensions to delineate party systems; parliamentary power and party polarization. The latter dimension was only applied to distinguish between the two cases of pluralism. As noted in the introduction, the proper category for Norway's present party system would be moderate pluralism. Katz and Mair (1995) claimed in a highly contested thesis to observe increasing cartelisation of the party system. The basis for this development in the party system was that the established parties control and share some public privileges which are essential for open party competition, such as financial support and access to the mass media. Competition from new or small parties outside such a cartel is therefore effectively kept to a minimum. While Katz & Mair see this as a tendency in some West European countries, Norway included, it is a tendency towards undermining the party competition that forms the basis of a pluralistic democracy. While I will not go into

27

See for instance the Labour Party leader Jens Stoltenberg's appearance in Aftenposten on 6. September at http://tux1.aftenposten.no/nettprat/stoltenberg060905/.

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Øyvind Kalnes: Flies Into Spiders _______________________________________________________ 28

the cartel vs. pluralism discussion in general , a point of interest is whether the application of party web sites may have a systemic effect in either direction. Does it favour the established parties or open up for smaller, less established parties? 5.1. Cartelisation of resources? I have commented upon the distribution of financial resources, and public party financing in particular earlier in this paper. The established parties have undoubtedly secured themselves access to public funding, providing especially well for the largest parties. Of course, such uneven distribution of resources may tend to be mirrored in the voting patterns. How then, is the editorial attention from the mass media portioned out? First and foremost, it should be made clear that this is a matter of editorial discretion, which is far from the partycontrolled attention contained in the cartel thesis. However, no one should be surprised by the fact that it follows existing voting patterns, albeit with some interesting deviations. The table below shows the major parties' share of the vote in the election, as well as their share of media attention in the election month (September 2005), and the election year as a whole. Media attention refers to 29 the number of articles referring to the party leader .

28

All aspects of the cartel thesis are not relevant here, and therefore not discussed. This author would also remark that there is still sufficiently competition between a sufficent number of parties to speak of moderate pluralism. If anything, the development has been from a predominant party system (until the 1960s) to a moderate pluralist system, which at times seems to tilt towards extreme pluralism. 29 It should be noted that the outgoing prime minister, Kjell Magne Bondevik, was not the leader of his party. This indicates a probable underreporting of the media attention for the Christian People's Party, although Bondevik's main function in the camapign clearly was to represent the cabinet and government coalition alternative as a whole.

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Øyvind Kalnes: Flies into Spiders

______________________________________________ Table 4. Parties' share of votes and media attention

Labour Party Conservative Socialist Left Progress Centre Christian People's Liberal Red Electoral Alliance Coast Others TOTAL

Votes 32,7 14,1 8,8 22,1 6,5 6,8

September 2005 Articles % 6143 29,3 2993 14,3 3073 14,6 2935 14 2541 12,1 1509 7,2

Whole 2005 Articles % 29536 25,2 19146 16,3 18608 15,9 16814 14,4 10988 9,4 11812 10,1

5,9 1,2

1198 384

5,7 1,8

8468 904

7,2 0,8

0,8 1,1 100

223

1,1

885

0,8

20999

100,1

117161

100,1

Sources: Aardal 2006 (votes), Norsk Samfunnsbarometer (media 30 data) The data indicate that share of media attention roughly corresponds to party size, in terms of votes. The Progress Party and the Socialist Left Party seem to be the most important deviations, in opposite directions. The Centre party also seem to benefit in terms of media attention, while the Labour Party comes somewhat worse off. The results for the Progress Party and the Socialist Left Party are in line with the allegations from the Progress Party's former leader 31 (Carl I. Hagen), that Norwegian media has a leftist leaning . 30

Norsk Samfunnsbarometer (Retriever) indexes articles from Norwegian news media in print and on the Internet, as well the news from one of the two dominant TV stations (TV2). 31 Allern (2001: 125ff) reports that about half of the journalists had political experience and that this experience were more leftist than for the voters at large. Especially the Red Electoral Alliance was overrepresented, but also the Socialist Left Party. None reported experience from the Progress Party.

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Øyvind Kalnes: Flies Into Spiders _______________________________________________________ Apparently for all minor parties, and to some non-leftist parties, there is a potential compensation in websites providing a comparatively cheap and direct communication channel. A statement from the party treasurer of the Democrats (on their website) indicated a belief in that direction: For a small party that has great problems getting media exposure, communication with the voters through the Internet is very important. Through the Net the party can reach all voters that seek an alternative to the major parties. Initiatives in the media are frequently marked by that the issues are being pushed to their extremes and that politicians do not get the opportunity to explain and go thoroughly into their points of view. The Internet gives the party an opportunity to go thoroughly into - and explain for interested voters and party members - the background for the political initiatives making media headlines. (My translation from Norwegian). 5.2. Making the parties visible on the web As commented earlier , in terms of the basics of setting up a web site, the resource threshold is very low and most parties have managed this step. Still, the voter has to be able to find these web sites, and of course be motivated to visit them. The likelihood of remembering a web address is a direct function of it being short and intuitive. All parties in our sample parties had secured their own domain name, using the party name 32 in full or the established abbreviated form (http://www.xxxx.no/) . The exception to this rule was the Conservatives, whose Norwegian Past experience does not in itself say anything about present sympathies. Journalist surveys survey made in 1999, 2001 and 2005 (Allern 2001:1259, Aftenposten April 2., 2005) do however give clear indications that there is a leftist tendency, as well as a lack of sympathy for the Progress Party. Still, this do not necessarily translate into a leftist editorial content, as the small media attention to the Red Electoral Alliance might indicate. 32 The Democrats appear both with the .no and the .info extension in their adress.

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______________________________________________ name contains a non-English letter "ø", which had to be substituted by an "o". For voters unfamiliar with this naming convention, "googling" the party name in question always brought the party web site out on top, even for those parties whose names referred to common Norwegian words. Hence, for those curious about particular parties there were few barriers to finding their websites, as long as they knew about the party in the first place. Voters without specific knowledge of all relevant parties depend on guidance from portals, directory services and other web sites that link to party web sites. To get a picture of the filtering functions of such guides or gatekeepers, I checked the "political parties"-sections of the five most important portals and directory 33 services , as well as the election -sections of the five most 34 important news mediators on the 30. August 2005, a fortnight before election day. All parliamentary parties, except the Coast Party but plus the Red Electoral Alliance, were linked to in all gatekeepers. The Democrats and the Pensioners' Party were linked to in 5 and 6 of the gatekeepers, respectively, while the Coast Party was linked to in 7 gatekeepers. Thus, size seems to have some effect when it comes to the smallest parties, regardless of 35 parliamentary status . General data on links from other web sites have been checked in two different ways. Google's "linked-to-service" measures the popularity of websites from the number of pages linking to them, while Alexa reports "other sites that link to this site". While the validity of the data may not be as high as desirable, they seem to confirm that the outgoing parliamentary parties (except the Coast Party) were considerably more linked to than the other parties. But the variations among the parliamentary parties

33

Google, Kvasir, ABC-Startsiden, Startsiden.no and SOL NRK, TV2, Aftenposten, VG and Da gbladet 35 That linking to a small non-parliamentary socialist party (Red Electoral Alliance) is preferred over a small parliamentary christian-conservative party (Coast Party) by three gatekeepers (SOL, Dagbladet, TV2) is harder to explain. 34

30

Øyvind Kalnes: Flies Into Spiders _______________________________________________________ were not as great as could be expected from voting patterns, while 36 the variations among the other parties were much greater In other words, the guidance offered by domain names, and links in directories and other web sites appear to promote pluralism, rather than cartelisation, as party size only partially matters. Another matter is whether the voters follow these “directions”. 5.3. Voter behaviour on the web One indicator of voter behaviour on the web is their search habits over time. The largest Norwegian search engine (Eniro, http://www.eniro.no/topplister/politiske_partier/) reports weekly on the most frequently searched terms in different categories. Data for the last three months leading up to election (weeks 24-36) in the category political parties reveal that Norwegian web surfers' searches for political parties on the web roughly followed the same pattern as normal voting behaviour. But there were some

36

Both Google and Alexa index just parts of the universe - as well as different parts - and given the narrowness of the subject, may be subject to manipulation from the parties themselves. The validity of these figures should be taken with "a pinch of salt". As for Google, between 219 and 268 page links were reported 22. June 2005 for the established parliamentary parties, except the Conservatives and the Liberals. For the latter two, the figures deviated in the quadruple range, casting serous doubts about their validity. (Note: Their Norwegian names meaning "right" and "left" might be an explaination). The other parties varied within a considerable range from 204 for the Pensioners' Party, 102 for the Red Electoral Alliance and only 50 for the Coast Party and 35 for the Democrats. Although Alexa reports just other sites that link to this site", but the main impression is very much the same. The main exception being, that the Socialist Left Party appear to be much more popular than the other party web sites and that the Red Electoral Alliance had replaced the Pensioners' Party as the small party closest to the established parliamentary parties. Once more, the Democrats appeared to be particularly unpopular. The data for Alexa are from three days before the election (9. September 2005).

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______________________________________________ 37

interesting deviations . The Progress Party was more popular in terms of searching than the Labour Party, and both the Socialist Left Party and the Centre Party ranked higher as search terms than in the elections. The opposite held for the Conservatives and the Christian People's Party. Still, searching does not necessarily direct voters to the parties' web sites. One way to generate data on actual hits is to use the parties' own hit counters. However, variable methods for counting cast doubts upon the comparability of the data (Note: Check this further). An alternative is to use the service Alexa (http://www.alexa.com/), which computes traffic rankings by analyzing the Web usage of Alexa Toolbar users. Of course, the cost of getting comparable data here is that the sample of Internet users will not be random. Alexa expresses "reach" as number of users per million. The three-month average reach which is reported in table 5 below, are measures of daily reach, averaged over the specified time period. Furthermore, Alexa also provides data on "page views per user", which are the average numbers of unique pages viewed per user per day by the users visiting the site. The data reported in the table was collected 9. September 2005, three days before election day, and cover the last three months of the election campaign.

37

. It should be noted that the the Democrats are probably hugely overreported, due to the their American namesake, and are not included here

32

Øyvind Kalnes: Flies Into Spiders _______________________________________________________ Table 5. Hits and page views for party websites Conservatives Progress Party Socialist Left Party Labour Party Liberals Christian People's Party Centre Party Red Electoral Alliance Democrats Coast Party Pensioners' Party

Votes 14,1 22,1 8,8 32,7 5,9 6,8

Reach 04,15 03,10 02,95 02,50 02,00 01,50

Page views 04,30 04,40 04,50 04,60 03,40 02,60

6,5 1,2 0,1 0,8 0,5

01,25 00,95 00,30 00,25 00,05

04,30 03,20 04,00 01,00* 03,00

Source: Alexa, http://www.alexa.com/, 9. September 2005 * The result of 1 page view is probably due to that this party had the only web site with frames The main pattern is that the reach of the web sites roughly follows number of votes. The most obvious deviations is the Labour Party's poor performance and the Conservatives' high reach, which is well above what could be expected from their popularity at the polls, as well as the figures for search popularity reported above. The Socialist Left Party also appeared to do better on the web than in the polls. Regarding number of page views, there is a difference between small and large parties, but nowhere near the differences in reach. This indicates that surfers stay a little longer on the web sites of large parties, probably due to the amount of information. Two notable exceptions are the Democrats' relatively good results and the Christian People Party's relatively bad results here. What Alexa do not tell us directly is the actual number of hits. But comparisons with other web sites reveal that to characterise party web sites as channels for mass communication

33

Øyvind Kalnes: Flies into Spiders

______________________________________________ 38

with voters is a gross overstatement . They are in no way able to match the reach of established media, or even the web sites of the established media. Bearing this in mind, the web can be pluralizing in the sense that even smaller parties can establish a reasonably visible presence. But if the proposition of the "media's leftist leaning" bears any truth, the non-socialist parliamentary parties and especially the Progress Party and the Centre Party, may have the most to gain. They have resources to build powerful web sites and the greatest need to rectify the contents of the ordinary media. 6. SOME PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS As the project still is ongoing, it would be premature to draw any final conclusions. But it is striking that after ten years of learning, the parliamentary parties on the web have converged. Their sites have reached a highly professional standard, mainly based on unilateral delivery of content, although there are still some noticeable differences. The parties seem to have learned to apply the new technology and have implemented powerful web platforms. The management and content of these platforms are integrated into the over all party organisation and - strategy. In that sense, the technology finally seems to have entered the slope of enlightenment and at least some of the parties might become the spiders referred to in the title of this paper. The main division appears between the established parliamentary parties and the other parties (including the Coast party), probably as a consequence of the significant differences in available resources more than 38

For the sake of comparison; Dagbladet, which is one of the most popular Norwegian papers on the net (http://www.dagbladet.no), had an average daily reach of 1198 and 6,6 page views in the three months leading up to 29. May 2006. According to Alexa, the web site of my workplace, Lillehammer University College, which has about 3000 students and 230 employees, has a popularity on par with most of the party websites, with an average daily reach of 2,8. Hence, even during the election campaign most party web sites had a level of traffic comparable to a small Norwegian district college.

34

Øyvind Kalnes: Flies Into Spiders _______________________________________________________ anything else. Still, the party system on the web might be a more pluralist system than the regular party system, as the minor parties are more visible here. How they actually perform in this more open competition is another matter. The parties do not seem to have taken advantage of internet technology to offer public, multilateral forums. On the contrary, they seem to have lowered their ambitions in this aspect, with the possible exceptions of the Socialist Left Party, the Liberals and partly the Labour Party. Being in the slope of enlightenment means that parties have yet to realise the full potential of the new technology i.e. reach the platform of productivity. For instance, the parties have not grasped the chance to reach the younger generations that seem to build media habits that are very different 39 from previous generations . Jürgen Habermas (2006) has remarked that the development of communication from books and newspapers to TV and internet has led to an enormous expansion of the public sphere. But the internet has also fragmented existing communication networks and undermined authoritarian public sphere regimes. As Habermas argues, the traditional public sphere also has its merits in being a community, where the citizens’ collective attention was focused on common matters. The basic findings so far in this project indicate that when the political parties were confronted with internet they just tried to emulate their positions in the traditional public sphere. But politics on the internet is another matter, much more fragmented into loose network-like participation and relationship. When parties recreate mirror images of themselves and try to “do business as usual”, they simply do not manage to attract and channel political activity and interest as they have done in “the real world. This remains the

39

Recent figures (Synovate MMI/Aftenposten 23. June 2006 http://www.aftenposten.no/kul_und/article1362084.ece) reveal that during the last six years the PC has won the upper hand over TV in terms of daily use of media in the age group 16-24. Most the 99 minutes that they spend in front of the PC are dedicated to chat, games and school work.

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______________________________________________ fundamental challenge for them, to become spiders in the political web. REFERENCES Allern, Sigurd (2001), Flokkdyr på Løvebakken : søkelys på Stortingets presselosje og politikkens medierammer, Oslo: Pax Aardal, Bernt et al.(2003), Valgundersøkelsen 2001. Dokumentasjons- og tabellrapport, 2003/14 Rapporter, Statistics Norway, Oslo-Kongsvinger Aardal, Bernt; Anne Krogstad, Hanne Marthe Narud and Ragnar Waldahl (2004), "Strategisk kommunikasjon og politisk usikkerhet", in Bernt Aardal, Anne Krogstad og Hanne Marthe Narud (red.) I valgkampens hete. Strategisk kommunikasjon og politisk usikkerhet, Oslo: Universitetsforlaget pp. 13-32. Aardal, Bernt (2003a), "Det første valg i et nytt årtusen", in Aardal, Bernt Olav (ed.), Velgere i villrede...En analyse av stortingsvalget 2001, Oslo: Damm, chap. 1. Aardal, Bernt (2003b), "Velgere i bevegelse", in Aardal, Bernt Olav (ed.), Velgere i villrede...En analyse av stortingsvalget 2001, Oslo: Damm, chap. 2. Aardal, Bernt (2006), How to lose a walk-over election? A Preliminary Analysis of the 2005 Parliamentary Election in Norway, ISF-Report 2006:6, Oslo: Institute for Social Research Aardal, Bernt og Hanne Marthe Narud (2003), "Er lederen viktigere enn partiet og politikken?", in Aardal, Bernt Olav (ed.), Velgere i villrede...En analyse av stortingsvalget 2001, Oslo: Damm, chap. 10. Barnes, Sarah et al. (2006), World Information Access Report for 2006, World Information Access Project at the University of Washington, http://www.wiareport.org, accessed June 14 2006. 36

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