Abstract
In a few short years, the World Wide Web has become a standard part of candidates' campaign tool kits. Virtually all candidates have their own sites, and voters, journalists, and activists visit the sites with increasing frequency. In this article, we study what candidates do on these sites in terms of the information they present by exploring one of the most enduring and widely debated campaign strategies: going negative. Comparing data from over 700 congressional candidate web sites, over three election cycles (2002, 2004, and 2006), with television advertising data, we show that candidates go negative with similar likelihoods across these media. We also find that while similar dynamics drive negativity on the web and in television advertising, there are some notable differences. These differences likely stem, in part, from the truncated sample available with television data (i.e., many candidates do not produce ads). Our results have implications for understanding negative campaigning and for the ways in which scholars can study campaign dynamics.
Repository Citation
Druckman, James N., Martin J. Kifer, and Michael Parkin. 2010. "Timeless Strategy Meets New Medium: Going Negative On Congressional Campaign Web Sites, 2002-2006." Political Communication 27(1): 88-103.
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Publication Date
1-1-2010
Publication Title
Political Communication
Department
Politics
Document Type
Article
DOI
https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10584600903502607
Keywords
Campaigns, Internet, Negative campaigning, Candidate web sites, New media
Document Version
post-print
Language
English
Format
text
