Political parties on the Net - 4 years closer to cyber-utopia?

This paper examines the websites of 11 political parties in the run up to the general election of 7th June 2001, to determine whether parties have got to grips with the Internet as a medium for information delivery and campaigning. The websites of all the parties were analysed; and their content, design, interactivity, multimedia features and currency evaluated. Overall, the parties appeared to have developed a more professional and corporate attitude to web design since 1997, and certainly made efforts to keep their web pages up to date. However, the parties tended to conform to a rather sterile design lacking in multimedia features, and mounted only predictable content. Only a few parties had made any special effort to draw users to their websites. Similarly, although interactive features were present, few of these allowed more than a token input into party policy.