Apologies for the dearth of new posts around these parts - loads of great stuff happening but work too busy to let me check my feeds regularly!
But I thought I'd definitely flag up a working paper by Nick Anstead and Andrew Chadwick from Royal Holloway University's New Political Communication Unit.
The paper, Parties, Election Campaigning and the Internet: Toward A Comparative Institutional Approach [downloadable here as a pdf] examines the use of the internet comparatively between political institutions in the UK and US.
The description reads:
"This paper argues that a comparative approach to analysing the relationship between technology and political institutions has the potential to offer renewed understanding of the development of the Internet in election campaigning. Taking the different characteristics of political parties and the norms and rules of the electoral environment in the United States and the United Kingdom as an illustration, it suggests that the relationship between technology and political institutions is dialectical. Technologies can reshape institutions, but institutions will mediate eventual outcomes. This approach has the potential to generate a theoretical framework for explaining differences in the impact of the Internet on election campaigning across liberal democracies."
I'm particualrly interested in the author's suggestion that the relationship between technology and institutions is dialectical - and that they are working towards a theory for understanding the relationship.
I haven't read the paper yet (although at 16 pages, it's not a lengthy read) but as far as I know it looks like a valuable study of what the UK can learn from the US in terms of political campaigning on the internet.
Anecdotally I don't think anyone could argue that the US is streets ahead of the UK in this sphere (just look to Labour's poor record) - what the paper hopefully offers is some reasons why and how.
Technorati tags: politics, internet, UK, US, New Political Communications Unit, comparative study
Comments