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This article concerns whether and how political candidates adopt social media in their election campaigns. For campaigns, the openness and interactivity of social media tools bring about risks in terms of losing control over the message. Departing from a cost-benefit perspective, this study addresses the question as to whether certain groups of candidates - differing in incumbency status, party type, gender, generation and urbanization level of the constituency - are more prone to adopt and utilize new social media tools and practices. In order to study how candidates approach social media in an early stage when the benefits are uncertain and the risks are apparent, candidate blogging in the 2007 Finnish national elections is examined. The findings show that the candidates generally were not ready to pursue the full potential of blogs and thereby to accept the risks associated with this open, interactive and personalized way of campaigning. Rather, the candidates took a cautious approach by not engaging extensively in the social media features and practices. However, female candidates and candidates not representing major parties were more likely to utilize a broader range of social media features and practices. The study adds support to the claim that campaigns do not simply adopt and utilize novel social media tools with the purpose of being innovative; they assess risks, costs and benefits. Social media do not alter the basic need of campaigns to control the message and to avoid stress in the campaign organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the campaign websites of the 2003 Finnish parliamentary candidates. By examining candidate-level online competition in the candidate-centred Finnish context, individual-level variables are brought to attention in explaining website uptake and how campaign sites are used by candidates in terms of functions and sophistication. The findings show that the distribution of the candidates' web presence was skewed towards an over-representation of major party candidates. Moreover, in predicting candidate website functions and sophistication, belonging to a major party was a strong predictor. Candidate competitiveness and incumbency were also found to be significant predictors. Nevertheless, the findings in the article indicate that the relevance of these political factors may be less significant than other factors, for example genre effects, in explaining candidate website content and presentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to expand the research on the adoption of social networking Web sites in electoral politics beyond the U.S. by exploring the use and impact of the YouTube video-sharing Web site in the 2007 Finnish national elections. Focusing on uploaded videos featuring candidates, the study shows that YouTube played a marginal role in the elections. Only 6% of the candidates disseminated YouTube videos. Online, the videos did not generally attract much public interest. However, the study also demonstrates that YouTube gave a voice to certain minor electoral players and ordinary citizens in the elections. The findings are compared with scholarly observations from the 2006 U.S. midterm elections--the first "YouTube elections." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes a close look at two important theories concerning the effects that online party campaigning has on party competition. The equalization and normalization theories are tested for systematic logical dependence on conditions present in existing studies within the research field. The conditions are country-specific contextual settings and study-specific methodology. The method of qualitative comparative analysis is used, such that variable based reasoning can be applied in the low n case study. The main result of the analysis is that findings of normalization are mostly dependent on offline conditions -- electoral settings in particular -- being favourable to major parties. Concerning findings of equalization, an online media environment favourable to minor parties, compared to the offline environment proved important. Through a meta-analytical approach, the article brings important information to light on how scholarly interpretations of the two theories have been constructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the internet's role in the Finnish 2004 European election. The first aim is to explore how different actors employed the web during the campaign. The second aim is to analyze the impact of the actors' web strategies on voters. Two circumstances make Finland interesting. First, the basic prerequisite for web campaigning is fulfilled since the northern countries, including Finland, are the most 'wired' area in Europe. Second, the electoral system is based on voters' direct choice of candidates, which encourages candidate-driven campaigning. The findings show that the main actors of Finnish campaigns, candidates and parties, dominated the on-line environment. Major party candidates, especially, campaigned on-line. Overall, the websites of all actors provided few information and engagement features. However, major party candidates made better use of the web than other candidates. Additionally, the news media's 'candidate selectors' made good use of web-specific features, and attracted relatively large voter interest. Concerning voter impact, few voters visited election-related websites. Moreover, few indicated that they obtained very/quite much information to support their voting decision from the web. Interestingly, young voters were an important exception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]