Internet in the 2005 UK election

The ESRC eSociety and the Hansard Society have organised an event for the launch of their report ‘Spinning the Web online campaigning in the 2005 general election’.

The report, to be launched in Parliament on the evening of July 5th, will examine innovations and strategies the internet has brought into party and citizen-led election campaigns.

The panel for this event is:

Stephen Coleman, Professor of eDemocracy – Oxford Internet Institute
Steve Ward, ESRC Project leader – Representative Politics in the Age of the Internet
Lynne Featherstone MP – offering an insight into the online campaign as a new MP

Short presentations will be followed by an open-floor discussion. [read more from the Hansard website]

Steve and I have a paper in the report, about:

• who used the internet during the 2005 election campaign


• what the technology was used for


• why some used it while others did not


• patterns of change from the 2001 general election


• the wider implications of these patterns of adoption and use for online campaigning

I will upload the paper to the site following the event. For now, you can read the abstract of report and paper.