Affiliations: [a] Information and Computer Sciences Department,
University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA | [b] Center for Applied ICT (CAICT), Copenhagen Business
School, Denmark | City University of New York, College of Staten Island | University of Massachusetts, Amherst | Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México | University of Southern California – Information
Science Institute
Correspondence:
[*]
Corresponding author: Scott Robertson, Information and Computer
Sciences Department, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1680 East-West Rd. POST
317, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA. Tel.: +1 808 956 2023; Fax: +1 808 956 3548;
E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract: Both candidates and voters have increased their use of the Internet
for political campaigns. Candidates have adopted many internet tools, including
social networking websites, for the purposes of communicating with constituents
and voters, collecting donations, fostering community, and organizing events.
On the other side, voters have adopted Internet tools such as blogs and social
networking sites to relate to candidates, engage in political dialogue, pursue
activist causes, and share information. In this paper we examine two years of
posts on the Facebook walls of the three major contenders for the U.S.
Presidency in 2008: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain. We analyze
participation patterns of usage along dimensions of breadth and frequency, and
interpret them in terms of the concept of the "public sphere".
Keywords: Digital government, social networking, e-participation, e-citizenship
