'Martin Kifer, Michael Parkin, and Druckman are studying the impact of the Internet on electoral politics. Specifically, they have developed a theoretical framework for studying politicians' campaigns on the Web that accounts for political strategic aspects of Web-based campaigns and novel technical elements. They use the framework to guide a content analysis of over 1000 candidates Web sites over five election cycles. They complement these data with information on candidate and district characteristics to study a number of dynamics including how candidates' campaign on the Web, how Web campaign strategies differ from other types of media campaigning, why candidates Web sites differ from one another, how campaign Web sites have changed over time, and what effect Web campaigns might have in the future. They also have explored the websites of Members of Congress, and studied the effects of websites on voters' opinions (using experiments). At present data from three election studies is presently available. More data will be available in the near future.' (Northwestern University)
