Journal of Electoral Studies

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Home Issues Backissues Volume 31, No.1 The Interactivity Effects of Computer-Mediated Political Communication

The Interactivity Effects of Computer-Mediated Political Communication

Tai-Li Wang
2003 / 11
Volume 10, No.2

pp.93-134
10.6612/tjes.2003.10.02.93-134
Paper

Abstract

While many researchers speculated the influence of the Internet in politics, Taiwan’s 2000 presidential election provided a timely opportunity for testing the impacts of web interactivity on computer-mediated political communication (CMPC). This study applies Elaboration Likelihood Model and two theorized aspects of web interactivity to suggested that, by controlling voters’ previous political attitudes towards the candidates and campaign issues, online communication effects will increase as a result of the growing interactivity of campaign information websites. Results of online experiments showed that the interactive level of a candidate website might not linearly contribute to positive web campaigning effects. In some cases, moderate interactivity may generate more optimal effects than higher interactivity. In other cases, it may be voters’ political interest in election campaigns that predominantly determine online campaigning effects. In addition, the results did not show a significant relationship between political interest and web interactivity. Across the five hypotheses, web interactivity did not differentiate online communication effects due to voter’s motivation or ability to process political messages. The impacts of web interactivity seem falling in the middle of the continuum of elaboration likelihood, that is, the “gray area” where people use varying amounts of both types of processing to attend to web campaign messages.

Keywords

Internet politics

web interactivity

online campaigns

computer-mediated political communication