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Cover -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Introduction -- PART I: Theoretical Issues and Research Questions -- 2 Understanding Digital Politics in Western Democracies -- 3 Parties and the Internet -- 4 Citizens and the Internet -- PART II: Parties and Digital Politics -- 5 Structure and Features of Political Websites -- 6 Disparities in Political Websites -- 7 Party Characteristics and Their Online Presence -- 8 What Drives the Online Presence of Parties and Candidates? -- PART III: Citizens and Digital Politics -- 9 Online Political Information in Seven Countries -- 10 Socioeconomic Inequalities and Online Political Information -- 11 Political Attitudes and Online Information -- 12 Political Engagement, Mass Media Use, and Online Information -- 13 Correlates of Online Political Information in Seven Democracies -- 14 Conclusion -- Appendix -- Notes -- References -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z.

This book presents an analysis of seven advanced Western democracies' digital politics - the US, UK, Australia, Germany, Italy, Spain, and France - from 2006 to 2010. Examining the presentation and consumption of website politics, his study not only refutes claims that the web creates homogenized American-style politics and political interaction but also empirically reveals how a nation's unique constraints and opportunities create unique digital responses. This first large scale, comparative treatment of both the supply and demand sides of digital politics among different national political actors is divided into four parts: research methodology and theoretical challenges; how parties and candidates structure their websites (supply); how citizens use websites to access campaign information (demand); and then ties the research results back into his theoretical framework. Because a key aspect of any political system is how political actors communicate, this book will be invaluable for scholars, students, and practitioners interested in political communication, party competition, party organization, political participation, and the study of contemporary media landscapes writ large.--description provided by publisher.

This study analyzes how citizens respond to information about high-profile journalists who run for office for major political parties in Italy. An experiment embedded in the Italian National Election Studies 2018 preelection survey (N = 1,533) tested whether exposure to information about journalist-candidates affects citizens' levels of populist attitudes and voting intentions. Information on journalist-candidates led to statistically significant increases in populist attitudes, particularly when participants were told that journalists were running for all the main parties. By contrast, participants who were shown information about journalist-candidates did not increase their probability to vote for the parties that fielded those journalist-candidates. These findings suggest that political parties do not stand to gain substantial electoral benefits when they recruit journalist-candidates, but this practice increases citizens' perceptions that both journalism and politics do not serve their interests. Citizens remain attached to the idea that journalists should retain some distance from politics rather than aim to become politicians themselves.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Political Communication on 25 Oct 2016, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2016.1201558 ; This study analyzes the relationship between online voter mobilization and political engagement in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom during the 2014 European election campaign. Internet surveys of samples representatives of these countries' populations with Internet access show that respondents who received an invitation to vote for a party or candidate via e-mail or social media engaged in a significantly higher number of political activities than those who did not. Moreover, the relationship between mobilization and engagement was stronger among those who followed the campaign less attentively, as well as in countries where overall levels of engagement with the campaign were lower (Germany and the United Kingdom) than where they were higher (Italy). These findings indicate that online mobilization may contribute to closing gaps in political engagement at both individual and aggregate levels, and thus suggest that digital media may contribute to reviving democratic citizenship.