Old Wine in New Bottles?

Abstract

This article expands the research on the Internet as a tool in election campaigning beyond the U.S. context. With regard to Web campaigning, the Nordic countries, including Finland, stand out as being of special interest, since they have a world lead in Internet users per capita. Empirically, the candidates' Web sites in the 1999 Finnish parliamentary election campaign are analyzed. First, the characteristics of the Web candidates ( n = 1,046) are scrutinized. More often than not, the Web candidates are incumbents, female, and rather young. Second, a random sample of sites is analyzed. The sites generally resemble traditional campaign material and rarely include real interactive features. Thus, as has also been observed in studies of U.S. Web campaigns, the candidates rely on the downward dissemination of conventional and positive campaign messages.