Abstract
This thesis is an attempt to answer the following question: How can the Internet be used to win political campaigns?
Most political campaigns use the Internet, with email lists and web sites, but there appears to be little understanding of the value this provides. This is not to say that the Internet cannot provide value to a political campaign - it just does not appear to be well defined.
The Internet is an evolving medium, although it is not unreasonable to say that the evolution of the use of the Internet by political campaigns has been somewhat slower than the use of the Internet for commercial organisations. As a genuinely new medium, there is very little literature describing either success stories, or the strategy required to succeed online. This thesis attempts to provide ecampaign methodology, within the framework of the New Zealand political environment and this evolving and innovative medium.
The current focus of Internet use in electronic campaigns is technology driven, rather than strategy driven. The approach seems to be use the technology rather than develop a clear strategy on how to win campaigns using the technology.
Currently literature is mostly a mixture of guides on how to use the technology, or a commentary on what campaigns are doing online. This is why this thesis attempts to answer the question outlined above. The dearth of strategic literature has driven the author to draw on previous experience of successfully commercial Internet projects, live case studies and observation of various ecampaigns to develop methodology to allow online political campaigns to succeed.
This lack of high quality examples and literature is especially the case in the following areas: targeting the swing voter, campaigning outside of the actual election campaign, targeting Diaspora, and using party members to control the campaign s topics of public debate.
To attempt to demonstrate some of the suggested methodology in practice, two major case studies have been created around live New Zealand cases: The National Party Ecampaigri, and the Independent Pipfruit Growers Association campaign against ENZA s pipfruit monopoly.
The results have been mixed, with the Independent Pipfruit Growers Association campaign resulting in the successful abolition of the export monopoly in April 2001. The National Party has been slowly adopting suggestions. As a consequence the results of their campaign have not been as positive. [Introduction]