A comparative study of campaign blogs and web sites. The case of Taiwan's 2008 general election
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14684521011036963 |
| Date | 20 April 2010 |
| Pages | 229-249 |
| Published date | 20 April 2010 |
| Author | Tai‐Li Wang |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
A comparative study of campaign
blogs and web sites
The case of Taiwan’s 2008 general election
Tai-Li Wang
Graduate Institute of Journalism, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
Abstract
Purpose – The blogging phenomenon has become a primary mode of mainstream communication
for the Web 2.0 era. While previous studies found that campaign web sites did not realise two-way
communication ideals, the current study aims to investigate potential differences in communication
patterns between campaign blogs and web sites during Taiwan’s 2008 general election, with the aim of
exploring whether the bloggi ng phenomenon can improve the proc ess of online political
communication.
Design/methodology/approach – The study used a content analysis approach, the web style
analysis method, which was designed specifically for analysing web content, and applied it to an
online campaign context in a different political culture, using Taiwan’s general election as a case
study.
Findings – Results indicated that the themes of both campaign blogs and web sites focused on
“attacking opponents” rather than focusing on political policies or information on particular issues.
However, campaign blogs and web sites significantly differed in all other dimensions, including
structural features, functions, interactivity and appeal strategies. Overall, in terms of the online
democratic ideal, campaign blogs appeared to allow more democratic, broader, deeper and easier
two-way communication models between candidates and voters or among voters.
Research limitations/implications – The current study focused on candidates’ blogs and web
sites and did not explore the other vast parts of the online political sphere, particularly independent or
citizen-based blogs, which play significant roles in the decentralised and participant-networked public
spheres.
Originality/value – The study illuminates the role of hyperlinks on campaign blogs. By providing a
greater abundance of external links than campaign web sites, campaign blogs allowed more voters,
especially younger ones, to share political information in a manner that is quite different from the
traditional one-way communication model. The paper also argues that interactivity measures should
be incorporated into the web style analysis method.
Keywords Taiwan, Internet,Elections
Paper type Research paper
Research background
The communication revolution represented by the Web 2.0 era lies in the sharing,
interaction and collective creation of internet content. As internet sharing platforms
become increasingly commonplace, a democratically-oriented internet environment
has been created, which draws particular attention from the field of political
communication. Scholars have suggested that the blog phenomenon may be the most
significant media revolution since the birth of television (Sullivan, 2002). The
popularisation of blogs has greatly expanded the expression of personal opinions to
challenges and reflections on public affairs, national policy and national authority .
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
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A study of
campaign blogs
and web sites
229
Refereed article received
3 April 2009
Approved for publication
30 November 2009
Online Information Review
Vol. 34 No. 2, 2010
pp. 229-249
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/14684521011036963
Another aspect of blogs that has gained attention lies in the popularisation of video
content sharing technology. Many recent arguments have centred around traditional
campaign reporting in mainstream media and its emphasis on “horse racing” aspects
and lack of substantial political information. With the advent of the Web 2.0 era and
the rapid popularisation of video sharing services, the potential impact of video
sharing media on the quality of political communication and the participation of
citizens in politics has received much public and academic attention. For voters, the
recent trend of video sharing not only provides a source for a more comprehensive
understanding of candidate policy platforms and oversight of candidate behaviour, but
it also further increases citizen involvement in public affairs.
Since blogs have become an increasingly prominent campaigning communication
medium in the Web 2.0 era, this study intended to modify the web style analysis
method developed in the previous literature (Kaid and Davidson, 1986; Banwart, 2002;
Bystrom et al., 2004). Web style analysis is a type of content analysis method that
systematically analyses self-presented styles on web sites or blogs (Trammell et al.,
2006). It is grounded in Goffman’s (1959) self-presentation theory and particularly
emphasises the analysis of video images.
This paper suggests modifications to web style analysis, with an aim of building a
more comprehensive framework to compare political web sites and blogs. This paper
argues that the original web style analysis could be improved by strengthening the
conceptual and operational definitions of the interactive content of web sites or blogs.
For other dimensions of web style analysis, such as verbal and nonverbal content of
web sites and blogs, this study modified several measurement items by incorporating
other empirical campaign research findings.
Another significant aspect of the current study is its effort to apply web style
analysis to a non-western campaign context, using a Taiwanese general election as a
case study. Taiwan’s 2008 general election had a profound impact on its democracy
because this election was the first held under new electoral rules adopted in 2005 under
an amendment to Taiwan’s constitution. Under the old electoral rules, voters had only
one ballot to cast in multimember districts and candidates could be elected with as little
as five percent of the vote in a given district. The new rules instituted a new
single-member district system employing two ballots for voters – similar to systems
used in Germany and Japan – one ballot to be cast for a candidate and one ballot to be
cast for a political party. Taiwan’s ruling party of the time, the Democratic Progressive
Party (DPP), suffered a landslide defeat in the election, while Kuomintang (KMT)
gained a solid majority of seats and won the presidential election which followed in
March.
From the perspective of political communication, this study was particularly
concerned with whether the rise in the popularity of blogs as a campaign medium will
bring any change or improvement to the online political communication process.
Previous studies either focused on campaign web sites or blogs. Limited research is
available to compare campaign web sites and blogs in one election, particularly in a
multi-constituency general election.
Previous studies also found that campaign candidates’ web sites tended to avoid
interaction between candidates and voters due to the possibility of loss of control and
ambiguity of campaigning communication (Stromer-Galley, 2000). In the UK studies of
the three major parties’ web sites during the 2001 general election revealed that party
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