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Kluver Announces New Book on Web Campaigning

Announced: May 11, 2007

Dr. Randy Kluver

If you think the Internet will provide an even playing field to the 2008 elections perhaps you should read "The Internet and National Elections: A Comparative Study of Web Campaigning." edited by Dr. Randy Kluver and an international group of collaborators who have just published the new volume examining how the Internet is used in election campaigns around the world. Kluver, who is Director of the Institute for Pacific Asia and research professor in the Department of Communication at Texas A&M and the lead editor of the new volume, said the book is an ambitious study drawing upon a common conceptual framework - the "Web sphere," and a shared methodological approach called Web feature analysis.

"The book examines how the Internet is used by a variety of political actors during periods of electoral activity," Kluver said. "By taking a look at how the net can be used in elections globally, it gives us a better understanding of how it can be used here."

Research teams around the world conducted analyses of elections during 2004 in 21 nations in Asia, Europe, and North America, ranging from technologically advanced nations, to those with low Internet diffusion, and from a variety of political and cultural contexts.

The key findings of the studies conducted for the book demonstrate that there are a number of factors that influence how the Internet will affect political processes, including political culture and technological diffusion.

From conceptualization to publication, this collaborative project took four years to complete, and involved nearly 30 researchers located around the world. Kluver's co-editors and co-principal investigators were Kirsten Foot at the University of Washington, Nick Jankowski at Radboud University in the Netherlands, and Steve Schneider at the SUNY Institute of Technology.

The book will be formally launched on May 15, 2007, at City University of London in the Stanhope Centre, with some of the world's top scholars on the Internet in politics. Planners of the event hope to connect interested persons via a simultaneous webcast featuring all four editors. For more information about the book, the webcast and to access the book launch Website visit
http://international.tamu.edu/ipa/projects/elections.asp.

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