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Abstract
Against the background of the debate about how the internet changes democratic processes, this article assesses the impact of online versus offline campaign information on citizens’ knowledge, attitudes and political behaviour using data from two pre-/post-election surveys conducted at the German federal elections in 2005 and 2009. Our results show that sophisticated and less sophisticated citizens alike gain knowledge when using online information. Moreover, we find that people exposed to online information develop less ambivalent attitudes towards candidates and parties but do not take on more extreme issue positions. Online information is ineffective in stimulating turnout but compared to traditional news media, the internet gives smaller parties the chance to gain votes. We conclude that overall online information can enhance election campaigns. However, the amount of change should not be overstated as the effects are similar to those of offline political information and depend on the campaign context.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Julia Partheymüller is PhD candidate at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Mannheim. She currently works as research associate at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES) and is part of the project team of the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES).
Thorsten Faas is Professor of Political Science at the University of Mainz.
ORCID
Julia Partheymüller http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8302-1912
Notes
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19. Lau and Redlawsk, How Voters Decide, pp.126–8.
20. Faas and Partheymüller, ‘Aber jetzt?!’.
21. Yang and Grabe, ‘Knowledge Acquisition Gaps'; Anduiza et al., ‘Internet Use and the Political Knowledge Gap in Spain'.
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33. See Diana C. Mutz, ‘The Consequences of Cross-Cutting Networks for Political Participation', American Journal of Political Science 46/4 (2002), pp.838–55. Mutz shows that ambivalence towards presidential candidates suppresses turnout. Therefore, a polarisation of attitudes leading to reduction of ambivalence should increase the probability to participate in elections.
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47. Johnston and Brady, ‘The Rolling Cross-Section Design'; Steven E. Finkel, ‘Reexamining the Minimal Effects Model in Recent Presidential Campaigns', The Journal of Politics 55/1 (1993), pp.1–21; Steven E. Finkel, Causal Analysis with Panel Data (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1995).
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49. In both surveys, the respondents had to locate six parties (CDU, CSU, SPD, FDP, Greens, Left) on an 11-point scale representing positions regarding a political issue. In 2005, the issue was whether the party under consideration wants to extend or cut back welfare benefits. In 2009, respondents were randomly assigned to one out of two position issues. Under the first condition, the task was to determine whether the party rather wants to lower taxes by means of cutting back social benefits or whether it wants to increase taxes in order to extend social benefits. Under the second condition, the respondents had to judge whether the party wants to build new nuclear power plants or whether all nuclear power plants should be shut down immediately.
50. Megan M. Thompson, Mark P. Zanna and Dale W. Griffin, ‘Let's Not Be Indifferent about (Attitudinal) Ambivalence', in Richard E. Petty and Jon A. Krosnick (eds), Attitude Strength: Antecendents and Consequences (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1995), pp.361–86; Mutz, ‘The Consequences of Cross-Cutting Networks for Political Participation'; Lilach Nir, ‘Ambivalent Social Networks and Their Consequences for Participation', International Journal of Public Opinion Research 17/4 (2005), pp.422–42; Rüdiger Schmitt-Beck and Julia Partheymüller, ‘Why Voters Decide Late: A Simultaneous Test of Old and New Hypotheses at the 2005 and 2009 German Federal Elections', German Politics 21/3 (2012), pp.299–316.
51. The polarisation index for the two chancellor candidates is calculated as follows: Polarisation-Index(Candidates) = –1*((C1+C2)/2) – |(C1-C2)|) with C1 and C2 being the candidate scalometer ratings. Thus, polarisation of attitudes here is measured as the inverse of what in the literature is also described as ambivalent attitudes. For the five parties, the logic of this measure is generalised and the formula is as following: Polarisation-Index(Parties) = –1* (mean(P1, … , P5) – 2* std.dev. (P1, … , P5)) with P1, … P5 being the scalometer ratings for the five parliamentary parties. See for references endnote no. 50.
52. The question wording for the socioeconomic issue differed slightly in the two surveys.
53. We do not include any further control variables in the model. Following a recommendation by Slater we tested whether entering political interest (as a control and proxy for selective exposure) leads to a substantive improvement of model fit. However, the model fit was not substantially improved, and the results remained essentially unchanged. We therefore conclude that the lagged dependent variables in our models already capture most of the impact of selective exposure. As multicollinearity caused by control variables that do not improve model specification can severely increase bias when analysing quasi-experimental data, we refrained from including control variables in the analyses presented in this article. See Michael D. Slater, ‘Operationalizing and Analyzing Exposure: The Foundation of Media Effects Research', Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 81/1 (2004), pp.168–83; Christopher H. Achen, The Statistical Analysis of Quasi-Experiments (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986).
54. Bernard R. Berelson, Paul F. Lazarsfeld and William N. McPhee, Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1954), p.240.
55. For the computation of marginals, poststratification weights have been applied. Furthermore, the time period of the two surveys was harmonised by constraining the 2009 sample to the same time frame as the 2005 sample (last 41 days before election).
56. Gibson and McAllister, ‘Do Online Election Campaigns Win Votes?', p.234.
57. Marc Hetherington, ‘Resurgent Mass Partisanship: The Role of Elite Polarization', American Political Science Review 95/3 (2001), pp.619–31.
58. Fiorina and Levendusky, ‘Disconnected’.
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