ABSTRACT
Overall, one can reasonably argue that the initial phase of party website development is over. For the most part, the early years of Internet use (1994-1998) were about symbolically creating a presence online. Currently, Internet strategies are being integrated into the mainstream of party communication and campaigning activity. So far, parties have concentrated their interest on employing new ICTs to increase their campaign effectiveness, rather than for participatory purposes, as cyber-democrats might have hoped. As this volume has revealed, parties have been cautious in using the new technology, just as they have been with other technologies such as television in the 1950s (see Chapter 5). Nevertheless, although parties’ use of the Internet has often been derided as dull and propagandist, their caution is understandable. In most countries, Internet access and political web use are still minority interests and, as several authors point out, because websites require citizen initiative to use them, the broadcast media remain far more important in getting one’s message across to a large audience. As has also been seen, parties are limited by their internal rules and structures. Chapters 9 and 10 (on Mexico and Korea) both indicated that new social-movement organisations (NSMs) and citizen groups were arguably more imaginative and active than parties, lending some support to Bimber’s (1998) notion of ‘accelerated pluralism’ outlined in the introduction to this volume. In part, this reflects the fact that there is more to lose for parties if they make errors with their ICT strategies. NSMs do not stand in elections and are generally under less journalistic scrutiny and, consequently, their online failures are less obvious. Moreover, political parties’ hierarchical structures mean that staff responsible for ICT strategy have less of a free hand than those involved with loose protest networks.
