Electoral campaigns are a defining feature of democratic polities. Yet, scholarship on electoral campaigns, particularly on the content of campaign communications, remains disjointed. In recent work, the investigators offer a theory of U.S. congressional campaign communications that brings together several distinct literatures (e.g., work on negative campaigns, candidate image, position taking). They tested the theory with data from content analyses of 736 candidates? campaign websites from 2002 through 2006.
With the support of a National Science Foundation grant (SES-0822819 and SES-0822782), the investigators extended their data during the 2008 congressional campaign. With the current project, they extend their data collection to the 2010 campaign. As before, they code sites over the course of the campaign, archive sites, and implement a survey of website designers. Unlike past efforts-and in response to the interest the data has generated-the investigators explicitly solicited input on the coding scheme. Moreover, they significantly broadened the project by exploring the consequences of campaigns. They implemented experimental studies of how campaign strategies influence voters, and coded official congressional websites to explore their responsiveness (i.e. the extent to which officeholders live up to the promises they make during campaigns). In the end, the investigators constructed a publicly available data set that includes coding of nearly 1,600 House and Senate campaign websites and more than 160 official congressional websites, over nine points in time (i.e., 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2010 for the campaign data and 2003, 2005, 2007, and 2009 for the official sites). These data include extensive information on each candidate's background, district, and campaign as well as data on television advertisements and media coverage. Furthermore, the investigators will collect experimental data on campaign effects on voters and survey data that capture the motivations of website designers.
In addition to enabling scholars to track the evolution of the Internet over time, the data offer researchers a unique opportunity to test theories of campaigns and their effects on voters and representatives. Unlike other unmediated sources of campaign communication-such as television advertisements and debates-virtually all candidates launch campaign websites and all representatives have official websites. This allows for analyses on a representative sample of candidates and representatives, rather than a sample biased towards competitive, well-funded campaigns (as is the case with advertisements, media coverage) or certain representatives. Websites also enable politicians to present a holistic picture of their behaviors rather than short soundbites or selected roll call votes.
The project has clear intellectual merit and offers many contributions to broad societal knowledge. The collection of new data can be used to significantly extend an understanding of political campaigns, voter decision-making, and representation. It will enable researchers beyond the investigators to test theories of campaigns on a new medium, with a representative sample of congressional races. An enhanced understanding of campaigns and their effects on voters can ultimately be used as a basis for reforms that could improve campaign quality. The project also will increase individuals' abilities to evaluate the connections between campaign behaviors and subsequent actions taken by elected representatives. Additionally, the data will enable scholars and pundits to make informed statements about how campaigns work on the Web. With each election cycle, more and more journalists and pundits comment on Web campaigning; however, the lack of systematic study means that there is no way to evaluate these comments or construct broad statements about the Web (and how it compares to other media and evolves over time). Finally, the project will involve students who will learn how to conduct research and be able to use the data in their own work. In the end, the project uniquely brings together data on three key components of democratic polities: campaigns, voting, and representation.
The advent and profusion of the Internet has transformed many aspects of life, including politics. Scholars have made some headway in documenting how the Internet affects things like citizen deliberation, news consumption, and political participation; however, less attention has been given to how it affects the conduct of electoral campaigns, which serve as the fundamental link between citizens and their representatives. The investigators aimed to fill this gap by continuing their ongoing study of how United States congressional candidates use the Internet in their campaigns. The investigators constructed an extensive and theoretically-grounded framework for collecting candidate website data that includes measures of both political strategy and technology use. Over the last four campaigns (2002, 2004, 2006, 2008), they used this instrument to collect data from more than 700 Senate and House candidates’ websites. These data were further augmented with detailed information about the candidates’ backgrounds, the districts/states, and the campaign. In 2010, the investigators continued their data collection while expanding their procedures to code sites multiple times throughout the campaign as well as archiving sites for future reference. The data – all of which are in the process of being made publicly-available – constitute a valuable resource for researchers and the public-at-large. Researchers will benefit from the fact that data from candidate websites provide an ideal opportunity to test theories of campaign behavior. This is because, unlike other campaign communications (e.g., television ads), candidate websites provide a representative, unmediated, and holistic portrait of what campaigns are trying to communicate to voters. This allows researchers to further investigate questions of issue ownership, negative campaigning, issue engagement, image ownership, and position-taking, for example. In fact, the investigators have already published articles and presented conference papers on these topics using these data. This project also serves the wider public interest by providing empirical evidence that will help in evaluating the ever-increasing amount of speculation and punditry concerning politics and the Internet. Moreover, this project provides detailed information that will help inform citizens about the many ways in which congressional candidates go about seeking their support.
