Distributing electronic folders

Paper presented at 'Horizon 1999: Conference on Communication', organized by the German Society for Communication Science, the Dutch Society for Communication Studies, the European Communication Association and the Department of Media and Communication of Utrecht University, 12-14 May, Utrecht.

Gerrit Voerman

1. Advantages and disadvantages of Internet for political parties
2. Political parties on Internet
3. Provision of information
4. Audio-visual possibilities
5. Interactivity
6. The reach of the Internet campaign
7. Competitive position of the smaller parties
8. Conclusion
9. Notes

The 1998 parliamentary election campaign for the Tweede Kamer (the Dutch House of Commons), probably the last election of this century in the Netherlands, heralded a new era in the fight to win the favour of the voters. Following the American and British political parties in 1996 and 1997, the Dutch parties not only presented their campaigns on television, on the streets and in the newspapers, but also in cyberspace, in other words, in the virtual world of Internet. Almost all parties opened so-called 'websites' - their own page on Internet where they could provide diverse items of information on themselves.

Not all of the sites were specially installed for the parliamentary elections. A few parties had already opened a site in 1994; in successive years, almost all the other parties followed their example ^{Footnote 1}. Parties who were not represented in Parliament, but who participated in the elections, also appeared on Internet in the run-up to Election Day on 6 May. Ultimately twenty of the twenty-two parties running in the elections had their own site; one of them even had two sites.

Due to this quantitatively large presence of the parties on Internet, the websites also became the stage for an electoral struggle; at least in theory. This article will deal with the way in which the parties made use of the specific possibilities that Internet provides, and whether or not there was a distinct style of campaigning on the websites ^{Footnote 2}. In this, the emphasis will be placed on the larger parties. In addition, the issue of whether or not the smaller parties could improve their competitive position with respect to the larger ones will be dealt with indirectly. Via the decentralised method of communication provided by Internet, the smaller parties, which are often largely ignored by the traditional media, were in a position to present their political beliefs to the voters in the way they thought fit ^{Footnote 3}. Prior to covering these questions, a brief summary of the possibilities that Internet furnishes to the political parties will be elucidated.

Internet, and particularly the websites, provides a number of advantages to political parties ^{Footnote 4}. First and foremost, the websites can rapidly provide large amounts of information that can be updated without much difficulty, such as press releases, brochures, electoral programmes, or even complete books. This information can be presented on the World Wide Web (WWW, a component of Internet) in various multimedial forms: as text, images (photographs, video) or sound (spoken word, music). The political message can be directed towards a broad public (broadcasting), or oriented towards certain target groups, such as party members or young or female voters (narrowcasting).

A great advantage for the parties is that they can highlight their views in a 'controlled' fashion, without the intermediary roles of selective and interpreting journalists from newspapers, radio and television. Accordingly, they obtain the opportunity to engage in 'unmediated politics': a new form of political communication, not filtered by and dependent on the traditional media.

Furthermore, the interactive facilities of Internet furnish the parties with the chance to perceive the issues that are of importance to their followers. If desired, parties can allow site visitors room to react explicitly to certain standpoints, propositions or elements of the electoral campaign. In this way, they can, in principle, confirm or modify these party concepts where necessary.

Thus, in sum, these applications of Internet would appear to be ideal for the parties - even more so due to the fact that the costs of installing and maintaining a site are relatively low, certainly in comparison to the costs of advertising in the traditional media. However, not all that glisters is gold: there are also disadvantages with this new medium ^{Footnote 5}. These drawbacks will be dealt with later in this article. Two of them will now be mentioned briefly: firstly, access to Internet is restricted in both quantitative terms and in terms of social level. Those who move in cyberspace are certainly not a true reflection of the electorate. Research performed in the summer of 1997 indicated that 8% of the Dutch population older than 16 years used Internet weekly. This group of Internet users was largely male (74%), younger than 35 years (68%) and earned more than average (65%) ^{Footnote 6}. It may be assumed than not all these will be interested in politics ^{Footnote 7}. This information means that all the above-mentioned advantages for the parties are rather relative.

A second drawback of Internet is the flawed security in a technological sense. In the run-up to the British elections, the Labour Party site was cracked and was swamped with anti-Labour political slogans and with pornographic images ^{Footnote 8}. The site of the Centrumdemocraten (CD, an extreem right-wing party) was also the victim of a break-in in October 1997, apparently by a follower of CP'86 (a rival right-wing group). On the CD site, they placed a photograph of the party chairman J.G.H. Janmaat with a number of people from Surinam (a former Dutch colony) and the text 'Stem vooral geen CD uit zelfverdediging, maar stem op CP'86' (To defend yourself, don't vote for the CD, vote for CP'86) ^{Footnote 9}.

These risks have not prevented parties from installing websites in the past few years. Apparently, the parties to the left of centre were more responsive to the new medium than the right-wing parties. In 1994, the environmentalist left-wing GroenLinks was the first political party to enter the digital arena with a site on Internet. The Labour Party followed later that year. Subsequently, the social liberal D66, the christian democratic CDA, the traditional left-wing Socialist Party (SP) and the conservarive liberal VVD followed in that order of sequence (see Table 1). The othodox-Christian GPV and RPF opened a site early 1998. The congenial SGP has remained at a distance from Internet up until now ^{Footnote 10}. Two parties form an exception to this sweep from left to right. The CD arrived on Internet quite early. After the above-mentioned break-in, however, its site was chiefly 'closed due to work in progress' ^{Footnote 11}. The other exception to the group of left-wing initiators was the SP.

Evidently, the Dutch parties recognised the importance of a website for the elections. The smaller parties such as the GPV and the RPF did their utmost to appear on Internet prior to the local council elections of March 1998. Even those parties that were not represented in the Tweede Kamer began their own site (see Table 1). The larger parties with a more established site renewed this punctually, which led to an increase in the attractiveness of the sites. Almost all the parties integrated electoral information into their site; the VVD was the only party that established, in January 1998, a special electoral site in addition to the party site.

Labour and the SP had the most pronounced concepts of the status of their sites within their electoral strategies. The SP hoped, via Internet, to approach certain groups of voters among whom it thought they could find potential supporters who were more difficult to reach via other channels: 'school-goers, students and young intellectuals' ^{Footnote 12}. Labour had a different intention. It wanted above all - inspired by the example of Labour in the 1997 British elections - to present the best possible political website. It was hoped that this site would contribute to the 'image of Labour as a modern party', and would also generate much free publicity ^{Footnote 13}. Instead of avoiding the media, the social democrats hoped to determine, to a certain extent, the traditional media agenda. The campaign leadership employed a professional bureau for the design. A special Internet editorial staff was appointed to continually update the information presented. This was aimed at the site being regarded as a central reference point in the campaign. Labour invested heavily in this choice: it paid more than NLG 150,000, which was almost five per cent of the total campaign budget. With this investment, Labour towered above the other parties. The VVD electoral site, and the SP and CDA sites each cost around NLG 10,000. GroenLinks and D66 reserved NLG 5,000 and 2,000 for their respective sites. Both sites were run exclusively by volunteers.

Table 2. Importance of different methods of communication

(1 = least important; 5 = most important)

In total, twenty of the twenty-two of the parties participating in the national elections had an Internet site, which is equal to ninety per cent, a very high percentage - certainly when compared to the United Kingdom. Of the fifty-six parties that took part in the British elections in May 1997 (including the single-candidate parties), thirty-one had an Internet site, which amounts to fifty-five per cent ^{Footnote 14}.

As mentioned, this seems to indicate that most parties regarded a website as a necessary means of communication in the national election campaign. It is questionable whether they saw this digital medium as being functional and useful in itself or whether they felt that they should not lag behind their rivals. This applied to GroenLinks, which was nota bene the Internet pioneer. Its campaign leader did not expect much of the site, but held the opinion that his party had to participate because other parties also had a site ^{Footnote 15}. In addition, most parties did not wish to be branded as old-fashioned by not being present on Internet in this information era. A site contributes to the image of a modern party - something that Labour deliberately attempted to realise.

The webmasters did not expect wonders of the sites, as was indicated by a questionnaire that was held among them. When asked about the significance of certain media in the communication between the party and the voter, they responded that television was the most important - an average score of 4.9 on a scale ranging from 1 (least important) to 5 (most important) (see Table 2). The daily newspapers, with an average score of 4.4, were also seen as being more important than Internet, which, nevertheless, with a score of 3.6, was regarded as being more important than the radio (3.0) ^{Footnote 16}. Compared to traditional party meetings, the webmaster expected more of their sites: the departmental meeting and the party congress, as links between the party and the voter, received an average score of 2.9 and 3.0 respectively.

From both an analysis of the contents and the webmasters' questionnaire, it appears that the main objective of the site was the provision of information. When asked about the importance of a number of possible site functions, the webmasters mentioned the 'provision of information to the voter' as the most important function - this gained an average score of 4.6 (see Table 3) ^{Footnote 17}. With respect to the importance of 'providing information to the party members', there was less consensus. Particularly the larger parties - the Labour Party, VVD and CDA - saw this as extremely important; in contrast, D66, GroenLinks and the SP were much less convinced of the need for this (the average here was 3.9).

Table 3. Evaluation functions sites by webmasters

(1 = least important; 5 = most important)

The importance that the webmasters attached to the supply of information to the voters was clearly expressed in the layout of the sites of most parties ^{Footnote 18}. In the months prior to 6 May, all sites provided much information that was specifically oriented towards the parliamentary elections (see Table 4). In general, this was information that had also been published in print form. The list of candidates (often with biographical data of the top candidates) could be found almost everywhere, along with the electoral programme (which could often be downloaded too). At the same time, most parties outlined their most important issues and points of policy, and placed their press releases and their campaign agenda on the site. Besides information that concerned the elections, many sites also provided information on the history, the principles, and the organisation of the party. D66 even included the complete text of the statutes and the internal rules and regulations, and the VVD presented all the regulations for candidature. Some parties also featured articles from party journals.

In total, a great deal of information was provided on the sites. This entailed problems for the parties in terms of keeping the information up to date. The larger parties claimed that this was done on a daily basis. This was not feasible for GroenLinks and the SP, never mind the other, smaller parties. As mentioned, Labour was the only party to have at its disposal a special two-person Internet editorial staff that placed new messages on the site during the campaign. This also occurred, for a short while and to a much more restricted degree, on the D66 site.

In the broad supply of information on the sites, the parties also have the possibility of narrowcasting: the attunement of the political message to special target groups. Most parties, however, did not make an explicit choice in this direction (leaving aside interest parties such as senior-citizen parties which are, by definition, oriented towards older people). The Labour Party chose to ignore this option: 'everything on the site is for everyone. Thus, we do not work with "concealed" icons for certain target groups', according to campaign worker Depla ^{Footnote 19}. Only on the CDA site and on the VVD electoral site was a special electoral category addressed: those with voting rights residing abroad, referred to as the ex-pats.

None of the sites provided special pages for young, new voters although, in the view of the webmasters, making contact with this group was one of the distinct advantages of Internet (with an average score of 4.0). The SP, which had initiated a site in order to make contact with school-goers and students, neglected to address these categories in particular: in this respect, the site as a whole was oriented towards a younger public.

non-responsive sites

Since the information provided on the websites can be adapted in the wink of an eye, these form an ideal instrument to react quickly to adverse messages in the 'old' media, or to attacks from political opponents. Instead of having to wait to see what remains of one's reaction in the newspapers or on television, parties can unfold their opinions exactly as they wish on the website. During the British elections, the larger parties were regularly engaged in running battles on their sites. Negative campaigning on Internet also occurred during the American presidential elections in the autumn of 1996. On the Democratic site, the 'Donkey Stomp' option referred to the, in their view, abject Republican standpoints.

In the Dutch digital campaign, the sites were not or only scarcely used for a 'rapid response' - either offensively or defensively - not even by Labour. The Internet editorial staff did not retaliate when the VVD kept pursuing the social democrats on the issue of the possible restriction of deductible mortgage interest - with the exception of one occasion when it dutifully announced that party leader and Prime Minister Kok had again clearly stated on the tv-news that Labour would not rescind the deductible interest. Instead of choosing the offensive itself, the site editorial staff functioned as a megaphone for television, which was evidently seen as inspiring more confidence. It also played almost no role at all in the attack on GroenLinks that Labour initiated a few weeks prior to the elections.

The CDA, VVD and D66 sites were also rather unresponsive during the campaign. The special electoral site of the liberals confined its activities, just as the others, to press releases and speeches (which the webmaster was capable of placing on the site almost immediately, for the benefit of journalists). The VVD campaign leadership had explicitly chosen not to react rigidly to other parties: 'the voter hates politicians squabbling' ^{Footnote 20}. It is striking that GroenLinks, in its campaign strategy, emphatically wished to avoid confrontation with the SP, but that it did take up the challenge in a civilised manner on its site.

Table 4. Information on websites

An exception to all these rather righteous sites was that of the SP. As a recognised protest party, it retorted vehemently to the 'neoliberal' coalition of Labour and the left- and right-wing liberal parties. This attitude characterised the site right from the outset. There was no additionally intensive campaign against Labour, for example, during the electoral campaign; it remained oriented towards the blend of social democrats and liberals.

A necessary precondition for making use of the responsive possibilities of a site is that the campaign leadership closely monitors the utterances of other parties. This permanent observation of one's rivals, however, took place to only a very limited extent: monitoring the contents of the media is rather underdeveloped in the Netherlands as yet ^{Footnote 21}. It also appeared that most webmasters hardly followed the activities of the others. The VVD webmaster was the only one who claimed to view the other sites on a daily basis; all his colleagues stated that they only looked at their rivals' sites once a week or even once a month. Not making use of the site's potential for attack may be connected to the webmasters' meagre expectations of attracting voters from other parties via Internet. This site function only received an average score of 2.9 in the questionnaire (see Table 3).

As mentioned, information can be presented in various ways on the website: as normal text or in audio-visual form. These multi-medial facilities can increase the attractiveness of a site, but they do lead to higher costs at the same time. Thus, it will be no surprise that there is a link between the size of the party and the degree of sophistication: the larger - or rather, the wealthier - the party, the more advanced the site.

Blessed with a well-filled wallet, the Labour Party was the leader in this field. It was the only party to offer its site visitors the choice between a 'simple experience' of the site and an exciting, dynamic 'flash version' with animations and sound. In order to realise this latter option, the Shockwave Flash program had to be installed first, which makes more demands on the visitor's PC.

The audio-visual facilities remained limited to the sites of Labour and D66 and the electoral site of the VVD (see Table 5). In general, this was not material that had been specially created for Internet; it consisted of messages that had been generated for other media such as radio and television. On all three sites, these could be viewed and heard by means of a special program. This plug-in could be installed via the sites. Furthermore, (parts of) speeches by the party leaders or by other prominent persons could also be listened to.

Several parties also provided gimmicks on their site. Visitors to the Labour site, for instance, could pluck a digital rose in order to install this on their own home page. Various games could also be found on the VVD site, but they were not self-made: links were made to other sites. The webmasters hoped, by means of these eye-catchers, to entice Internet surfers to visit the site. With the exception of Labour, however, these sites did not have much allure; most were little more than still-life pictures: it was not possible to play games or listen to audio fragments. The visual filling was mostly restricted to a few images, usually photographs of the party leader and other candidates, or posters from the 'real' electoral campaign.

Table 5. Sophistication of the party sites, 1998

One of the essential characterising features of Internet is interactivity. If they wish, parties can allow visitors to the site to react and to make contact with them. This enables the parties to sound out the opinions of the linked-up followers. Parties could make good use of this information during the campaign. Interactivity can assume various forms: from a private message via e-mail to 'chatting' to participating in a public discussion entirely reproduced on the site. These possibilities could only be found on a few sites; the first option was available almost everywhere ^{Footnote 22}.

Almost all parties provided the possibility of sending an e-mail to the party office or to the webmaster (see Table 6). Visitors could present their views on the party or the site to the party secretary, or could request further information. Often it was also possible to become a member of the party: roughly half of the parties had special forms that could be filled in, enabling people to register as party members via an electronic enrolment procedure. Of the many parliamentary candidates who were mentioned on most party sites, only a few turned out to be actually accessible via this channel (a few of the D66 and VVD candidates had their own - interactive - sites). On several party sites, it was possible for users to exchange ideas with the party leader via e-mail.

Another interactive facility that some sites provided was chatting. This form of direct, simultaneous (real-time) communication is a kind of electronic exchange of ideas, in which two or more participants converse by typing. During the D66 election congress in February 1998, site visitors could chat with parliamentary party chairman T. de Graaf. At chat session on the site of GroenLinks, in which parliamentary candidates would enter discussions with site visitors, failed as a result of technical problems. On the VVD electoral site, visitors could opt for a chatsite where they could chat about all sorts of topics, political or otherwise. According to the head of the VVD parliamentary party information department, it was not important whether or not there was a direct link with his party or with politics: 'You have to offer something special on the site. That's why we have included these attractive chat programs.'

Only a few parties made space available on the site for a digital debate. On the extremely interactive SP site, which was well in tune with the activist and rather populist bias of this party, everyone could make a contribution or personally start up a discussion. The debate was uncensored: indecent language was not removed, just as topics that were delicate to the party, such as 'SP not democratic?' or 'SP: the party of empty promises', were also allowed to remain. The same kind of open discussion took place on the VVD party site. Since there was no moderator - a discussion leader - topics that might touch a sore point could also arise.

On the other sites - if it was possible to debate at all - the exchange of ideas was not quite as inspiring as it was on the SP and VVD sites. Visitors to the Labour site, for instance, could not expand their own topics; they could only participate in the discussion on the four social-democratic election themes (work, safety, health care, and education). These restrictions probably contributed to the fact that there was no over-abundant reaction: around 140 reactions were mailed in the period from the middle of February to the beginning of May.

Summarising, relatively little use of the opportunity for interaction was made by the parties, apart from the e-mail option. It was possible to react in one way or another, with reference to the contents, on only five sites, three of which provided reasonably substantial opportunities ^{Footnote 23}. This relatively meagre attention to the digital debate is reflected in the smaller amount of significance that the webmasters attach to the stimulation of reactions from the voters via the site. On a scale of 1 to 5, the average score here was 3.6, which was 1 point less than the provision of information to the voter (see Table 3). Reactions from the members were regarded as even less important: this item scored an average of 2.7. Apparently parties found it more important to provide information than to receive it ^{Footnote 24}.

Various reasons can be given for this scant amount of interactivity. Firstly, there are organisational objections. Opening the party apparatus via e-mail addresses on the website could drastically deregulate the internal working system. The threshold for sending electronic mail is, after all, considerably lower than for sending a letter. If parties do not wish to frustrate e-mailers as a consequence of a slow (or even no) response to a message, they will have to adapt their organisation more to this new form of communication.

Furthermore, there may be political reasons why parties structure or restrict the digital debate. Opening up the discussions completely, as the VVD and the SP did, makes a party vulnerable to a certain extent. A bombardment of negative messages ('flaming') from supporters of a rival party, for example, could make it very troublesome for the host (such as extreme right-wing contributions to the VVD site, for instance). Besides, inappropriate pressure could be laid on parliamentary party members. However, neither of these risks turned into reality during the electoral campaign of 1998.

In more general terms, it can be stated that the outcomes of unmediated digital debate are often dubious. When a party wishes to reap the benefit of discussion - by allowing visitors to react to certain policy intentions, for instance - it is necessary to have some supervision of the exchange of ideas. This requires endeavour from the party staff, and thus costs money. Thus, in a nutshell: taking into consideration the financial, organisational and political problems that a very interactive site entails, most parties will not choose this option while the yield cannot be accurately measured.

The limited reach of Internet, in both social and quantitative terms, has already been indicated above. At this moment, we shall confine ourselves to the latter of these aspects. Of the respondents in the National Voters Research (in Dutch: Nationaal Kiezersonderzoek, NKO) in 1998, 6% indicated that they had used Internet at one time or another during the election period to gain information on politics. When worked out, it could amount to a bit more than half a million voters - which is probably a very optimistic estimate. This also does not mean that all these people have visited only party websites; taking into account the actual question, it is possible that they only filled in a voting test on Internet, or viewed information on the Tweede Kamer website, the senior website, or one of the special election sites of the daily newspapers, for instance.

Table 7. Number of visitors, 1 April - 6 May 1998

In any case, the figure of half a million illustrates the absolute maximum boundary of the digital campaign's extent. The visitor registration of the party sites should, in theory, provide a better indication. However, for technical reasons, it is not easy to determine the exact numbers. In addition, parties can make use of different methods of registration. The data displayed in Table 7 are therefore presented with some reserve ^{Footnote 25}. It is evident, nevertheless, that the larger parties attract more visitors, and that the number of visitors increases as election day approaches: the number of visitors in the last week prior to the election is approximately half to two-thirds of the total amount in the previous month.

On the basis of this information, the total amount of visitors to the party sites during the election campaign period between the beginning of April and 6 May can be estimated to be 100,000 at the most. This is less than 1% of the entire electorate. Without doubt, this figure is somewhat flattering due to a possible double counting: it is not inconceivable that a number of people visited several party sites, or the same site more than once.

Whatever the case may be, it is obvious that the party sites are not inundated with visitors. Perhaps this is the reason that most webmasters do not assign great value to the website in terms of the communication of their party with the voters (see Table 3). The relatively poor audience figures for broadcasts by political parties still exceed the number of people who visit the party websites. In this light, it is not strange that, with its site, the Labour Party aimed at goals - free publicity and a modern image - that lie outside the digital means of communication as such. It is rather an expensive adventure to spend a hundred-and-fifty thousand guilders exclusively on providing (often existing) information for the benefit of, at the most, a few tens of thousands of surfing voters.

It is interesting to see whether or not the appearance of parties on Internet will have consequences for the mutual status in the political arena. Taking into account the scant costs of the installation and management of a website, this new medium could possibly work in a levelling fashion. After all, the low financial threshold forms no inhibition to the smaller parties to manifest themselves on Internet, whereas they - certainly the electoral debutantes - encounter a great deal of difficulty in reaching the national newspapers or television. In principle, the chances for the parties should be more equal in cyberspace. Research in the United States has shown, however, that this levelling only occurs to a very limited extent in actual practice. In the American presidential elections in the autumn of 1996, many small parties had a site on Internet but these were considerably inferior, in terms of multi-medial and technological possibilities, to the sites of the Democrats and the Republicans. These larger parties were able to invest much more in creating an attractive site than the smaller parties, so that the pecking order in the real world was reproduced on Internet ^{Footnote 26}. In contrast, the smaller parties in the United Kingdom seemed to be capable of manifesting themselves on Internet more than in other media, to the disadvantage of their larger rivals ^{Footnote 27}.

The Dutch situation tends to resemble the American. With the exception of the SP, the sites of the smaller parties such as the GPV and the newcomers were clearly less sophisticated. They were also updated much less frequently. In general, they could not compete with the sites of the larger parties, and certainly not with that of Labour. The visitor statistics reflected this: in the two to three months prior to the elections, there were more than 3,000 visitors to the site of 'Nederland Mobiel'; the NMP site received almost 800 visitors and the NCPN site welcomed around 300.

The campaign for the national elections of May 1998 may have taken place on Internet to a certain extent, but this does not mean that the parties reaped the full benefits that this new medium offered them. In general, their sites gave a static and reserved impression. With many of the parties, the emphasis lay on the provision of information that had often appeared previously in printed form. In this sense, the Dutch party sites were not much inferior to the sites of their British counterparts in their elections of 1997, which were typified by British journalists as being 'electronic brochures' ^{Footnote 28}.

In terms of layout and design, most parties kept their sites rather sober: the graphic and audio-visual facilities were limited (and where they were present they often reproduced material that had already been generated for other media). In fact, it was only Labour that was more exuberant: a special 'Flash' version, gimmicks, audio and video fragments. For most political parties, the relatively high costs of these digital embellishments will have been an obstacle. Moreover, the benefits of such an investment remain vague as long as not all Internet users possess machines that are powerful enough to enable them to reproduce these multi-medial extras efficiently. However, it is self-evident that these elements will become more important in the future. The more attractive the site, the greater the chance that the visitor will return and may just pick up en passant something of the political message. This concept was certainly the basis of the VVD electoral site.

In addition, the interactive possibilities for site visitors were generally pretty limited, albeit less so than on the British sites. Although it was possible on almost all sites to take up contact with the party via e-mail, there was very little opportunity for digital debate (with the exception of the VVD and the SP). This reinforced the brochure-like character of the sites. Anxiety for unguided missiles and other embarrassing surprises from down below, allied to scepticism about the results, contributed to the centrally controlled, top-down provision of information that most parties preferred ^{Footnote 29}.

This cautious, reserved attitude of the parties on Internet also found expression in the absence of attacks on political opponents. Negative campaigning is a form of campaigning that is accepted to a certain degree in the United States and the United Kingdom, countries that have a polarised, largely two-party system. This is much less the case in Dutch political culture. The larger parties are aware that they will have to negotiate with one another in the cabinet formation after the elections. The smaller parties have much less difficulty with issues involving coalition-forming, but these too, with the exception of the SP, made little critical reference to their rivals. Even digital pinpricks were scarcely applied. Besides this, there was little reaction on the sites to the presentation of news in the media. In comparison to political gatherings or encounters on television, the Internet campaign was extremely mild.

If there was one aspect of the virtual electoral campaign that contrasted strongly with the real-life version, this was in the domain of the personalisation of politics. The party leader as a person received much less attention on the Internet sites than in the struggle for voters that was dominated by television. Of course, there were pictures of and statements by the party leaders on the sites, but there was no dominance of personality as there was in the 'real' campaign. It could almost be said that the Internet campaign was based on a paradigm different to the real one: conviction by means of information instead of enticement by the image - although it remains disputable whether or not this occurred deliberately.

Summing up, the conclusion must be that Internet did not inspire the parties to conduct the election campaign in a fundamentally different way. The site functioned as a supplement to the traditional communication channels. There was no hint of a special strategy specifically oriented to the site. This may be due to the relative newness of this phenomenon, but the scant amount of expected visitors may also have been of influence. Compared to the millions of television viewers, the number of people that are online is extremely limited.

This will certainly alter in the future. At the following national elections, planned for the year 2002, the number of Internet users will have increased substantially - certainly if web-television makes an entrance ^{Footnote 30}. Not only will more older people be online, there will also be a new generation of voters who were highly adept in digital matters long before their eighteenth birthday. In that case, it might be expected that there will be more spectacular happenings on Internet due to the greater electoral quota that can be captured. In 1998, neither the public at large nor politics in general were sufficiently developed for a serious digital electoral struggle: therefore there was no real virtual campaign.

Footnote: 1 See G. Voerman and J.D. de Graaf, 'De websites van de Nederlandse politieke partijen, 1994-1998', in: Jaarboek 1997 Documentatiecentrum Nederlandse Politieke Partijen, Groningen, 1998, 238-269. Almost no party site that appeared on Internet in the 1998 electoral campaign now exists in its original form. The Documentation Centre for Dutch Political Parties of the University of Groningen is working on the digital archiving of the sites of political parties, so that these remain available for journalistic or academic research in the future.

Footnote: 2 Compare S. Ward and R. Gibson, 'The First Internet Election? United Kingdom Political Parties and Campaigning in Cyberspace', in: I. Crewe, B. Gosschalk and J. Bartle (eds.), Political Communications: Why Labour won the General Election of 1997, London, 1998, 93-112. This article on the Dutch digital electoral campaign is founded on this British analysis. The author wants to thank R. Gibson and S. Ward for their assistance. See further: P.W. Tops, G. Voerman and M. Boogers, 'Political websites during the 1998 parliamentary elections in the Netherlands', as yet unpublished.

Footnote: 3 See M. Margolis, D. Resnick and Ch. Tu, 'Campaigning on the Internet: Parties and Candidates on the World Wide Web in the 1996 Primary Season', in: Press/Politics, 2 (1997), 1, 59-78; and R.K. Gibson and S.J. Ward, 'UK Political Parties and the Internet. "Politics as Usual" in the New Media?', in: idem, 3 (1998), 3, 14-38.

Footnote: 4 For the common features of the new information and communication technology (ICT) mentioned in this section, see: J.B. Abramson, F.Chr. Arterton and G.R. Orren, The Electronic Commonwealth. The Impact of New Media Technologies on Democratic Politics, New York, 1988; P.W. Tops and P. Depla, 'Politieke partijen in het digitale tijdperk: de technologische uitdaging', in: G. Voerman (ed.), Politiek zonder partijen? Over de horizon van de partijpolitiek, Amsterdam, 1994, 91-98; and P. Depla, Technologie en de vernieuwing van de lokale democratie, The Hague, 1995, 184-194.

Footnote: 5 These comments on the use of Internet by parties are partially borrowed from D. Birdsell and D. Muzzio, 'Political uses of the World Wide Web in the 1996 US Presidential Campaign'. Paper presented to the conference 'Images of Politics', Amsterdam, 23-25 October 1997; and W. Rash, Jr., Politics on the Nets. Wiring the Political Process, New York, 1997.

Footnote: 6 Data taken from research performed by Trendbox, 22 July 1997.

Footnote: 7 A study of American Internet users in 1996 showed that only a quarter of them had visited a political website. Of this group, only 4% said that the information provided by the site had influenced their opinion. See W. Wu and D. Weaver, 'On-Line Democracy or On-Line Demagoguery? Public Opinion "Polls" on the Internet', in: Press/Politics, 2 (1997), 4, 82.

Footnote: 8 See de Volkskrant, 11 December 1996 and 5 April 1997.

Footnote: 9 Trouw, 2 October 1997. On the CD site, the original text was 'Grijp in. Stop de waanzin. Stem CD uit zelfverdediging' (Intervene. Stop the madness. Vote for the CD out of self-defence).

Footnote: 10 See Voerman and De Graaf, op.cit., 242-243.

Footnote: 11 It is not clear exactly when the CD opened a site on Internet. In the electoral period, the CD also had another site with the American provider GeoCities on which the electoral programme was presented. The 'official' party site did not have this.

Footnote: 12 See Voerman and De Graaf, op.cit., 252.

Footnote: 13 See the note from P. Depla to the PvdA campaign leader J.M. Wiersma, concerning the 'campaign site', no date.

Footnote: 14 See Ward and Gibson, 'The First Internet Election?', 99.

Footnote: 15 Interview by Ph. van Praag of J. Lagendijk, campaign leader of GroenLinks, 20 April 1998.

Footnote: 16 These data originate from a questionnaire that was sent to the webmasters of the parties represented in the Tweede Kamer in April 1998. All parties responded except the AOV, the CD, Ouderen-Unie 55+, and Senioren 2000. The list of questions in the Dutch questionnaire was based on research in the United Kingdom: see Ward and Gibson, 'The First Internet Election?'.

Footnote: 17 All respondents gave the maximum score of 5 here, with the exception of the D66 webmaster who assigned a 4.

Footnote: 18 During the campaign for the Tweede Kamer elections, the contents of the sites were classified by means of criteria that had been applied during the study of the digital election campaign in the United Kingdom. The party sites were regularly consulted but, taking into consideration the fluid nature of the medium, it cannot be fully excluded that in certain segments certain statements may have been missed. It can be assumed that this will not significantly affect the general picture. The description following does not, in general, refer to the CD site that was disrupted.

Footnote: 19 See the note from P. Depla to the PvdA campaign leader J.M. Wiersma, concerning the 'campaign site'; no date.

Footnote: 20 C. Cornielje and T. van der Maas, 'Acht jaar en een dag. De verkiezingsoverwinning van de VVD', in: P. Kramer, T. van der Maas and L. Ornstein (eds.), Stemmen in stromenland. De verkiezingen van 1998 nader bekeken, The Hague, 1998, 20.

Footnote: 21 H. Anker, 'Een bijzondere verkiezingscampagne?', in: Kramer, Van der Maas and Ornstein, op.cit., 124.

Footnote: 22 The more private mailing lists of GroenLinks and D66 are not taken into account here.

Footnote: 23 There was also a proposition on the GroenLinks site, but visitors could only indicate whether they agreed, disagreed or had no opinion on the matter. This variant has not been included in Table 5 under 'debate'.

Footnote: 24 The result of the question to the webmasters concerning the advantages of the site forms a slight contradiction to this determination of priorities. The option 'reactions from the public' received an average score of 4.1. However, it is a fact that the sites were not structured to facilitate this option, but were chiefly geared to the provision of information.

Footnote: 25 Figures from the PvdA-webmaster, 16 February 1999; VVD electoral site-webmaster, 11 May 1998; GroenLinks-webmaster; SP-webmaster, 16 February 1999. D66 could not produce visitor statistics in April and the beginning of May; in March 1998 the D66 site received 7,288 visitors (figures from A. Admiraal, webmaster D66, on questionnaire). The GroenLinks visitor statistics are estimated, because the data from the third week in April are missing. On Election Day itself (6 May) 3,247 visitors went to the PvdA site; the SP received 1,353.

Footnote: 26 See M. Margolis, D. Resnick and Ch. Tu, 'Campaigning on the Internet: Parties and Candidates on the World Wide Web in the 1996 Primary Season', in: Press/Politics, 2 (1997), 1 (Winter), 59-78; see also Rash, op.cit., 178.

Footnote: 27 Gibson and Ward, 'U.K. Political Parties and the Internet', 22. With this, both authors adjust their previous, more negative findings concerning this point; see Ward and Gibson, 'The First Internet Election?', 97 and 110.

Footnote: 28 Cited by Ward and Gibson, 'The First Internet Election?', 106.

Footnote: 29 See G. Voerman, 'Dutch Political Parties on the Internet', in: ECPR-News, 10 (1998), 1 (autumn), 8-9; Gibson and Ward, 'U.K. Political Parties and the Internet', 30-31.

Footnote: 30 See Ward and Gibson, 'The First Internet Election?', 108.