All 19 presidential candidates have web sites

All 19 candidates for president have Web sites, and blogs are the least of it, according to a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Nearly all of the sites now have pages on MySpace, the social networking Web site. Online fundraising has become standard—Barack Obama in the second quarter of 2007 alone raised $10 million on his Web site, a third of his total. Several candidates used their sites to kick off their campaigns, rather than staging an old-fashioned campaign event designed to get press coverage.

It all has raised new questions about the evolving communications of American politics and the role of the Web in particular as a way of sidestepping the scrutiny of traditional journalism.

How are candidates using their Web sites? To what extent are they trying to evade the traditional media? What images and tested keywords are they promoting, and which ones are they avoiding? To find out, the Project for Excellence in Journalism examined in detail the Web sites of the 19 announced presidential candidates, comparing them on a range of features and studying their language.[1]

What we found is that one can learn a good deal about individual candidates from these sites. Users can also interact here with the campaigns and other citizens, and even move in many cases to grassroots activity. The emphasis of candidate sites is also more on issues and biography, with little of the horse race and tactical focus that critics decry is an emphasis of traditional media. Rather than bypassing the mainstream media filter, the candidate sites try to exploit the traditional press by using their material selectively in self-serving ways. What is missing is balance, any effort to get below spin—and the ability to compare one candidate with another.

Among the key findings:

• Candidate Web sites have fully embraced politics as a two-way conversation with voters. Twelve sites also offer the opportunity for visitors to turn that dialogue into grassroots action (organizing their own events, fundraisers, etc). Add dialogue and action together and Democrats have the most interactive sites, led by Barack Obama, followed by Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Bill Richardson.

• Perhaps the most fundamental grassroots activity of all, registering people to vote, is lacking here. Only four candidates—Hillary Clinton, John Cox, John McCain and Barack Obama—offer tools or information about how to register.

• Blogs, a novelty in 2004, are now mainstream. Fifteen of the 19 sites feature their own official weblogs, and seven offer users the chance to start their own. Mitt Romney has his five sons author his campaign blog. Sam Brownback lets users contribute to his. John Edwards lets them write diaries.

• Savvy visitors may even be able to determine leading candidates from the so-called lesser ones. The top candidates—those with the most money and poll popularity—have the most technically sophisticated sites, update more often, use more video and include more news articles. They also focus on fewer issues. Edwards features the fewest issues (six). Dennis Kucinich has the most (91), and is the only candidate to talk about hemp and animal rights.

• When it comes to language, the biographies of the GOP candidates differ from those of the Democrats. The GOP bios emphasize “leadership,” “taxes,” and “values;” Democrats stress “children,” “family” and “protect.” And Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to name the party to which they belong.

• Some words are missing altogether in the biographies, including “God,” “moral,” and “progressive.” No Democrat uses the word “liberal”, and even Republican front runners shy away from using “conservative.” The only ones who do are candidate notably trailing the polls. For her part, Hillary Clinton almost entirely avoids reference to her husband at all.