An evAluAtion of the functionAlity And delivery of websites of politicAl pArties in south AfricA

The political communication environment worldwide has been transformed by the Internet with websites providing opportunities for affordable information dissemination and reception. Internationally, a party contesting an election without a website seems impossible today. This exploratory study examines the use of websites by political parties during the 2009 South African elections and investigates the functionality offered by the websites as well as how effectively this functionality is delivered. The study analysed the websites of both large and small political parties. It is worth noting that in spite of the lower Internet penetration rates in South Africa, the majority of political parties contesting the 2009 elections had websites. The study shows that the websites of the larger parties generally offer more functionality than those of the smaller parties, supporting the view of ‘normalisation’ of party competition in cyberspace. However, an analysis of the delivery of the content does not confirm the normalisation effects.


INTRODUCTION
The Internet has transformed the political communication environment worldwide with websites providing opportunities for affordable information dissemination and reception (Gibson & Ward 2002;Stanyer 2006).In the developing world it is unthinkable for a party to contest an election without Internet presence; in fact, most parties now consider a website a necessary tool for campaigning (Stanyer 2006;Conway & Dorner 2004).A recent prominent example of the use of the Internet for political campaigning has been the Barack Obama presidential campaign.Obama has been referred to as 'America's first Internet president' due to the manner in which his campaign team exploited information technology to interact with electorate during the campaign period (Greengard 2009:16).
Early studies of Internet usage for political campaigning focused on the United States of America (USA) (Gibson & Ward 2000).However, subsequent studies have been conducted in, amongst others, the United Kingdom (UK) (Jackson 2007), Japan (Tkach-Kawasaki 2003), Australia (Gibson & Ward 2002), New Zealand (Conway & Dorner 2004), Italy (Vaccari 2008) and Germany (Schweitzer 2005).There have been recommendations that such research should be extended into longitudinal studies and similar analyses should be undertaken in other countries to build a broader picture of the use of websites by political parties (Conway & Dorner 2004;Schweitzer 2005).
Exploratory studies on the use of Internet for South African political parties have highlighted the level of Internet penetration as a crucial difference between South Africa and developed countries, such as the UK and the USA.Whilst over 55% of adults in the UK and USA have access to the Internet (Smith, 2009;Lusoli & Ward 2005), only approximately one in ten South Africans have access (Lefko-Everett 2009).However, this is still a significant proportion of the people who vote (Lusoli 2005;News24 2008).Whilst most campaigning will continue to utilise traditional media, such as television and print, there is a growing opportunity for South African political parties to use electronic media to reach certain groups of supporters (Lefko-Everett 2009).
Using the 2009 elections as a case study, this exploratory study examines how effectively South African political parties use the Internet.It examines the functionality offered by the websites available as well as how effectively the websites deliver these functions.By looking at the functions available online, insight is gained as to whether the channel was used to reach a wide audience, to provide information quickly and cost effectively and whether or not it was used as a way of interacting with voters.However, the usefulness of the website will depend on the effectiveness of the delivery of the functionality as the content will count for little if it is difficult for the target audience to use.Performing the study in South Africa, results in findings that are more applicable to other developing nations than previous studies, which have typically been conducted in developed countries (such as the US, UK, Japan, Australia, Italy and Germany) and do not factor in the low rates of Internet penetration prevalent in African countries.

Politics and the Internet
Politicians have always used a wide range of methods to communicate with people in their quest to get elected.Since the 1990s, candidates have used websites to publicise their views, garner support and fund their campaigns in the US (Greengard 2009;Schweitzer 2005).Early Internet technology only provided one way communication, allowing candidates to report events and make partisan appeals.However, modern technology (i.e.blogs, wikis and social networking sites) allows for interaction with the electorate (Stanyer 2006;Greengard 2009).Barack Obama's presidential campaign leveraged the opportunities offered by the Internet to communicate with people and garner support for his campaign.The campaign attracted approximately two million Facebook supporters, collected the email addresses of over 13 million people and the Obama.comwebsite had more than two million registered users (Greengard 2009).The campaign team began using the Internet early on and saw it as a way to make contact with people who were not engaged in the political process unfolding at the time (Elsworth 2008).In the lead up to the election, 74% of American Internet users used the Internet to access election related news items or to get involved in the political process (Smith 2009).
The use of the Internet as a campaign tool offers benefits to both the electorate and political parties.One of the benefits of using technology for the electorate is that the Internet enables free flow of information as the information is no longer controlled by the political parties, authority structures or media organisations (Elsworth 2008).Internet campaigns are driven by the consumers rather than the producers (Lusoli & Ward 2005;Lusoli 2005).The Internet also adds transparency to campaign politics by providing the public with a platform to debate the claims made by political parties (Elsworth 2008).Internet search engines make it easy for the public to validate politicians' claims.For campaigners, the availability of information on the Internet means that if used correctly, political parties can deliver 24 hour access to instantly updated information and campaign news, as well as instant rebuttals to attacks from other parties (Lusoli & Ward 2005;Lusoli 2005).The Internet also offers a cost effective channel through which political parties can reach voters.
However, this technology also has the potential to damage a party's image.Unless a party has a clear purpose behind their online activities, it is possible that the online activities may project a negative image of the party (Gibson & Ward 2000).Whilst the new level of transparency is positive for the electorate and the political parties, there is always a danger that insignificant issues can easily be magnified.Consequently, politicians using technology to boost their campaigns could find themselves open to more criticism than those who do not (Hartley 2009).It can be said, therefore, that offering more participative options on the party website, could open political parties to damaging abuse without necessarily providing a significant benefit (Gibson, Margolis, Resnick & Ward 2003).The ease with which unverified, doctored and incorrect information can be posted on the Internet also raises new challenges for political candidates (McGinity 2007).Furthermore, seeing that the information is always available, political websites are a convenient option for information seekers (Lusoli & Ward 2005).
Previous research has examined the possibility that the Internet provides an opportunity for equalised competition between parties regardless of party size or resources available (Gibson & Ward 2002).The 'normalisation' view suggests that the inequalities seen in real world campaign activity are simply replicated on the Internet as financial constraints limit the funding available for the development of a website (Schweitzer, 2005), therefore, larger parties will perform better in cyberspace than smaller parties (Vaccari 2008;Gibson et al. 2003).The opposing view suggests that the low cost of establishing a website, the lack of external editorial control and the appeal of independent non-establishment views to young people are all factors that could be beneficial to smaller and less established parties (Gibson & Ward 2002).Apart from party size, a divide is also seen between parliamentary and non-parliamentary parties (Gibson et al. 2003).
Another interesting point in looking at the use of the Internet by political parties is the demographic profile of the potential users of such websites.It has been noted that the youth are more likely to use the political party websites.Obama received strong support from youth and first-time voters and credit for much of this support has been given to the campaign's use of the Internet to reach these voters.Young Internet users are more likely to vote than young people not using the Internet (Lusoli & Ward 2005).Further, it has been noted that websites with a multimedia format are attractive to young people (Gibson & Ward 2002;Lusoli 2005).
The role the Internet has played for political parties in different parts of the world is affected, to an extent, by the prevailing political landscape.For instance, the role of the Internet in terms of politics in Japan is different from the role the Internet plays in democratic nations with multiparty systems and few media controls (Tkach-Kawasaki 2003).Despite government restrictions placed on the use of websites for political campaigning in Japanese elections, opposition parties and newer parties in particular are making extensive use of electronic media.Conversely, in Russia where one party is also dominant, websites tend to be uninformative with limited functionality and an amateurish look and feel (Oates 2008).

The goals of political party websites
According to Gibson and Ward (2000), political party websites have five basic goals: • information provision -dissemination of information about the party's identity and policies • campaigning -attempts by parties to recruit voters • resource generation -raising funding and registering new members • networking -building and strengthening links within the party and with external bodies through discussion applications and hyperlinks • promoting participation -encouraging people to engage in the political process by raising awareness of events and issues and offering opportunities for interactive communication.
The inherent properties of the Internet offer political parties an alternative channel for reaching potential voters and information seekers.Increased bandwidth and new functionality mean that large volumes of information can be made available to an audience in a short time, in a manner that appears personalised and offers opportunities for interaction (Gibson et al. 2003).
However, research has shown that the available functions are not being utilised and the Internet is primarily used by political parties for information dissemination (Jackson 2007).

A framework for evaluating political websites
The criteria used to evaluate political websites are broadly based on those used to evaluate general Internet resources (Conway & Dorner 2004).Gibson and Ward (2000) proposed a framework using 43 evaluation criteria to study the functionality and delivery of websites.Functionality focuses on the broad direction and type of information and communication flow (ICF).The direction of the information could be upward (from organisation to user), downward (from user to organisation) and lateral (outwards from the organisation to other bodies, or inwards to structures within the organisation).Two-way or interactive ICFs are characterised by input from users or from the organisation with either side expecting a response from the other.The delivery component of the framework examines the effectiveness with which the functionality is delivered.The criteria used to evaluate delivery are focused on data retrieval and presentation, considering only the most basic aspects of navigability, accessibility, freshness and visibility and are focused on older Internet technology capabilities that are now widely available on most websites.
If the Internet is to be considered a communication tool rather than just a data retrieval tool, modifications need to be made to the Gibson and Ward (2000) model (Oates 2008).Gibson et al. (2003) adapted the framework for use in their comparative study on Internet campaigning in the USA and UK; they added criteria such as conference information, privacy policy, article library and volunteer solicitation.In terms of delivery, Oates ( 2008) suggests augmenting the model to allocate points for participatory items, such as the number of events listed, whether users can post to a website (e.g. using blogs) and whether users are able to access social networking sites.However, the original model still works effectively for evaluating political websites in countries such as the UK and Russia where political websites tend to be less dynamic (Oates 2008).
The Gibson et al. framework and its derivatives have been used in a number of studies.For instance, for a study of political party websites used in the 2006 Italian election, Vaccari's (2008) evaluation used three main groupings of variables: • information which included user-and party-initiated information supply • participation, including online interaction, resource mobilisation • professionalism in terms of multimedia usage, accessibility, update frequency and accessibility.
The study confirmed the findings of earlier studies, that is, that party websites are still used mainly for information exchange rather than establishing a participatory environment.Schweitzer (2005) studied websites of German political parties in the leadup to the country's 2002 elections.In addition to evaluating functional and formal aspects of the websites (as proposed by Gibson and Ward (2000)), the study also examined the content related aspects of the websites as well as comparing online campaign activities to those being used in traditional media.An Australian study conducted outside of a pre-election campaign period found that the main function of Australian political party websites was one-way information provision with few sites taking advantage of the variety of multimedia or interactive applications available (Gibson & Ward 2002).
Conway and Dorner ( 2004) used an adapted version of Gibson and Ward's (200) framework to study New Zealand's political party websites shortly after the 2002 elections in that country.
The study found that, similar to the Australian and German studies, political websites were mainly used to provide information and little use was being made of the tools available to make this information more accessible.Parties in parliament provided a wider range of functions on their websites than nonparliamentary parties but there were no significant differences between the minor and major parties.

CONTEXT South African Political Process and use of the Internet
To facilitate the understanding of the discussion, this section will give an overview of the South African political context.Parliamentary elections are held in South Africa every five years and all nationals over the age of 18 are eligible to vote.The country uses a proportional representation voting system (Government of South Africa 1996) whereby the electorate vote for a party; the number of parliamentary seats for a party is in direct proportion to the number of votes it received.A political party selects members to fill its parliamentary seats.There are two chambers of Parliament, namely the National Assembly and the Council of Provinces.Each voter casts two votes, one for the national level and one for the Provincial Assembly of the province in which they reside.
The country has no direct presidential election.It is the responsibility of parliament to vote for a president from the list of candidates nominated by the various parties in parliament.However, in practice, parties promote their presidential candidates during the campaign period.
There were 40 parties registered to contest the national and provincial elections held on 22 April 2009 in South Africa.
Eleven parties contested the National Assembly election and the provincial Elections in all nine provinces.Two parties contested elections at national level only, fourteen parties took part at national level as well as in one or more (but less than nine) provinces and thirteen parties were involved at provincial level only (in one or more provinces) (IOL 2009).
Research on the use of the Internet amongst South African political parties is still in its infancy.There are differing views on how effectively South African political parties are using the Internet.Lefko-Everett (2009) found that prominent parties have well established websites and are actively using applications such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.It has been argued in the media that local politicians do not understand the value of digital media or how to use it and are unwilling to allocate funding to such initiatives (News24 2008).