The Web 2.0 Election: Does the Online Medium Matter?

Abstract

The 2008 U.S. presidential election saw the first significant integration of Web 2.0 technologies; however, scholars know little about how Web 2.0 sources influence political attitudes. To address this, the authors test the effects of exposure to various Web 2.0 sources during the 2008 U.S. presidential election. They find that young adults exposed to television network sites and candidate Web sites consider them more trustworthy and high-quality than YouChoose ‘08 and Facebook. Moreover, YouChoose ‘08 viewers exhibit more government cynicism, whereas those exposed to candidate Facebook pages have a heightened sense that they influence the political system. Last, the authors find that YouChoose ‘08 and Facebook viewers were more likely to vote on Election Day.

KEYWORDS:

• ABCNews.com
• candidate Web sites
• Facebook
• political campaigns
• YouChoose ‘08
• young voters
• YouTube
• 2008 U.S. presidential election

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Midwest Political Science Association 2010 annual conference in Chicago, IL. The authors wish to thank Cathy Cheal, Shaun Moore, Peggy Chiu, Marcus Kasper, Andy Drews, Justin Bauer, Katie Forzley, Joshua Cline, Brett Geschke, and Roger Larocca for their invaluable research assistance. The Oakland University Department of Political Science supported this research.

Notes

Note. All estimates are ordered probit coefficients with standard errors in parentheses.

*p < .10; **p < .05; ***p < .01 (one-tailed).

Note. All estimates are probit coefficients, with standard errors in parentheses.

*p < .10; **p < .05; ***p < .01 (one-tailed).

Some also label Weblogs or “blogs” as a Web 2.0 application, but blogs made their appearance in the late 1990s, even if it was in a limited number.

In general, ABCNews.com presented balanced coverage of Obama and McCain, giving roughly equal space to both candidates as well as comparable positive and negative coverage. Balanced coverage of political candidates is expected on ABCNews.com, as the mainstream press is subject to journalistic norms of objectivity and neutrality (Bennett 1996; Gans 1979).

To tap partisanship, we use the traditional 5-point item, running from 1 for strong Democrat to 5 for strong Republican. Gender was coded 0 for females and 1 for males. Race was coded 0 for blacks, Asians, and nonwhite Hispanics, and 1 for whites. The sample consists of 41 percent males and 59 percent females of whom 78 percent are white, 10 percent are black, 2 percent are Asian, 1 percent are nonwhite Hispanic, and 5 percent are members of other races. Twenty percent are strong Democrats, 19 percent are Democrats, 34 percent are Independents/no preference, 16 are Republicans, and 10 percent are strong Republicans. The mean age is 19.69 (SD = 2.73).

The ordered probit coefficients are z-scores; therefore, the predicted probabilities are obtained using a table of standard normal distribution.

Government trust was based on the following: (a) “How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right?” (1 = never; 2 = some of the time; 3 = just about always; 4 = most of the time) (b) “Would you say the government is pretty much run by a few big interests looking out for themselves or that it is run for the benefit of all the people?” (1 = government run by a few big interests; 2 = government run for benefit of all) (c) Do you think that people in government waste a lot of the money we pay in taxes, waste some of it, or don't waste very much of it?” (1 = waste a lot; 2 = waste some; 3 = don't waste very much) (d) “Do you think that quite a few of the people running the government are crooked, not very many are, or do you think hardly any of them are crooked?” (1 = quite a few crooked; 2 = not very many crooked; 3 = hardly any are crooked) Cronbach's alpha equaled 0.60 for the trust index.