ABSTRACT
There is broad agreement amongst the contributors that the Internet can provide fringe parties with a presence. As Wallis states, in relation to Mexico, opposition parties have been allowed more exposure because of the Internet. However, the overall benefits of such exposure for outsider/fringe parties are dubious. Margolis et al. provide comprehensive evidence of the dominance of the US Democrat and Republican parties in cyberspace and, of course, the traditional media through their preexisting resource advantages. Whilst the domination of major players is less pronounced in multi-party systems, parliamentary parties still lead the way, as was demonstrated in Chapter 4. Although cyberspace allows fringe parties a presence, as several chapters indicate (see Chapters 4, 8, 9 and 10), the vast majority of the electorate still receives its political information via traditional broadcast methods. Even where citizens are using the Internet for political information they do so through sites such as AOL or the BBC, which they see as having authority and impartiality – when in fact much of the reporting is based upon information released in varying forms by the political parties themselves. This is also true of fringe or emergent parties, but they often lack the resources to update the information as quickly and may not have the same levels of access to, or daily interactions with, journalists. Thus the major parties often set the agenda, with the fringe parties struggling to get the same level of recognition and having to provide far ‘juicier’ stories in order to attract attention. In essence, a political catch 22 is at work here: at present, fringe parties need to gain recognition through traditional political means in order to obtain the resources needed for online developments, and such resources that are available are often swallowed up by traditional parties.
