ABSTRACT
Questions over the potential of the Internet in opening up new opportunities for online campaigning and citizen engagement in the political process have been the focus of much research in political communication. Early studies into this phenomenon simply indicated that official online campaigns tended to replicate the one-way communicative patterns that we have become familiar with in offline campaigning; i.e. they offered few real opportunities for citizen engagement (Coleman 2001; Gibson et al. 2003; Jackson 2007). The successful use of social media and the Internet during the 2008 Obama US election campaign, however, has seemed to breathe new life back into the debate. Findings suggest that social media are providing new opportunities for citizen engagement in politics (Smith 2009).
