Riding the cyber campaign wave highs and lows of promoting philippine candidates on the web

Chapter One INTRODUCTION I. Political Campaigns and the Internet The Philippines, considered the ‘showcase of democracy in Asia,’ (Crouch, 1985) is known for its vibrant and mostly turbulent political upheavals, habitually marked in recent decades by ‘people power’ protests, military adventurism and presidential impeachments. The country is also synonymous with mobile politics (Teeling, 2004), after cell phone text messaging aided in the ouster of former President Joseph Estrada in 2001. One other intense political exercise in the country are elections, which have figured prominently in Philippine political development since being introduced by American colonizers in the 1900s (Coronel, 2004; Teehankee, 2006). Commentators have since observed a kind of timelessness about the ‘highly-personalistic nature of politics, as well as the rituals and rhetoric of political discourse from the early 1960s until the period of martial rule in the 1970s up to the restoration of democracy in 1986’ (Timberman, 1991). In the late 1990s, politicians caught on to the new formula of mixing information and entertainment that was instigated and perpetuated by Filipino television networks, which had copied the American entertainment industry (Abinales and Amoroso, 2005). During the same period, political actors and election stakeholders began to embrace Internet technology in enlightening citizens on upcoming elections and educating voters on the background of some aspirants to public office via campaign websites (Pabico, 2004). The succeeding elections saw more candidates using campaign websites to reach out to voters (Cuevas, 2004), similar to what U.S. politicians had been doing since the mid 1990s (Gibson, Nixon 1 and Ward, 2003). Interestingly, some of the candidates who won in the recentlyconcluded mid-term elections last May 14, 2007, were those who launched individual campaign websites. Their online practices can be said to reflect to some extent the socalled ‘Americanization’ of electoral campaigns (Schafferer, 2006). As for the highly-politicized Filipino electorate, the advent of cable and satellites, coupled with the ‘increasing influence of communications technologies in the formation of political opinion,’ was seen to change the manner in which they chose their leaders (Magno, 1994; Valdehuesa, 2005). 1.1 Scope Given this interesting socio-cultural and political climate, this thesis seeks to understand the impact of online campaigning on Philippines politics by studying the web-campaigns of six senatorial candidates and the electorate’s response to them. It will analyse official campaign websites and not those produced by any organization other than the one controlled by the candidate or his campaign or communication staff. This analysis will be supplemented with interviews with the candidates themselves or their representatives. It will then study the perceptions of the online audience towards Web campaigns through focus group discussions with Filipino voters. The detailed research questions to be addressed by this thesis will be enunciated in Chapter 2. 1.2 Significance Apart from the dearth of studies on this evolving subject matter that merits a new and broader investigation, there is a need to understand the unique adoption of Web campaigning by local candidates from the context of certain political realities prevailing in the country. Philippine candidates, like 2 their counterparts in many parts of the globe have tapped the Internet to promote their candidacies, but they have done so in ways different from their counterparts in the region and from the United States. While fund-raising and network-building typically characterize U.S. campaign sites, Filipino candidates in particular deliberately excluded this feature that encouraged donations to their campaigns via the websites, citing real and legitimate concerns. Whereas, in the 2004 elections, it was also observed that candidates did not fully harness the potential that the technology had to offer and that Filipino candidates lacked the requisite skills and financial resources (Mirandilla, 2004), this study will be significant as it will show that the situation has changed to some degree. This study will attempt to show how local candidate sites demonstrate the increasing knowledge and skills on the part of candidates and their campaign staff in using the Web to reach out to voters. Online campaigning itself is still considered a new political tool in the Philippines whereby candidates here can make their presence felt not just to the online community in the country, but to overseas Filipinos who turn to the Internet for developments back home. The Philippine context makes for a compelling inquiry for a variety of reasons. While the level of Internet adoption in the Philippines is quite low compared to some of its neighbors in the region, it is projected to grow. A recent Nielsen study has also pointed to a slight drop from the dependence on television in favor of the Internet for information. This is aided by the proliferation of Internet cafes in urban areas in some parts of the country. Furthermore, mobile phone penetration is high, 3 and the potential for media convergence between the mobile phone and the Internet makes this study more pertinent. On the other hand, Filipinos are said to be techy-savvy and recognized worldwide as top users of sms or texting and social networking sites on the Internet. The preoccupation with the Internet could potentially benefit both candidates and voters, in that if done right, it could level the playing field for political actors and contribute to greater voter awareness about those aspiring to be future leaders and the elections in general. This thesis was able to address these issues because it examined select candidate websites, complimented these with interviews with the candidates themselves or their campaign staff, and last but not the least, provided the perspective of the target audiences of these campaigns – of Filipinos based in the country and abroad. 1.3 Goals This thesis will therefore attempt to analyze the extent to which Filipino candidates are using their websites in promoting themselves to the Filipino online community based on political and web-based marketing principles. The second goal of this paper is to understand the expectations and concerns of the online audience towards this new campaign technique, particularly on the potential of the campaign website to serve as a new forum for deliberative exchange. Lastly, this thesis will attempt to determine the extent to which the online efforts of Filipino candidates echo the marketing practices of American candidates, and whether there are distinct features unique to Philippine Web campaigns. 4 1.4 Contribution This thesis therefore hopes to make a modest contribution to the growing literature on Internet studies in the Philippines and in Asia by providing a deeper understanding of how online politics is practiced by specific political actors, in the context of the country’s vibrant, complex and democratic political environment, as well as from a political marketing perspective. This thesis hopes to advance what some scholars assert, that the practice of technology-driven information politics, which includes the deployment of the Internet, occurs at varying degrees (Castells, 2004; Kluver et al, 2007). In particular, this study presumes to expand the notion that the level of adoption of online campaigns depends on the technological diffusion and political culture prevailing in a country (Kluver et al, 2007). This study asserts that more than technological skills and knowledge, political culture weighs more heavily in the manner in which candidates here adopt online campaigning, as it provides specific findings from the Philippine context on its unique brand of politics that will help explain why politicians here use the Internet the way they do. It hopes to impart a picture of the state of online affairs for a specific period to which scholars can return, in bridging studies of different time frames. Candidates and campaign planners may also find this work useful in crafting their online approach with marketing principles in mind, and integrating it with their overall campaign strategy. Meanwhile, the valuable information provided by focus group participants in the Philippines and in Singapore will address the gap in the current literature, by establishing what Filipino audiences make of high-tech campaigns. 5 1.5 Structure of Thesis The remaining section of this introductory chapter will provide background on the various Web practices of political parties and candidates from different parts of the globe. It will also feature a separate section on the Philippines’ political environment and Internet diffusion in order to provide background and history for understanding the manner in which online campaigns are adopted by local politicians. Chapter Two will undertake a review of the related literature on Web campaigns. Chapter Three will detail the multi-method approach employed in this study in evaluating campaign websites and in studying the perceptions of candidates as well as those of the online audience. Chapter Four will deal with the findings and discussion from the website evaluation, while Chapter Five will present the findings and analysis of the audience feedback on online campaigns. Chapter Six, the final empirical chapter, will discuss the findings on the global and local character of Filipino Web campaigns. The thesis will conclude by discussing key findings of the study, its contribution to the body of knowledge on online electioneering, and present its forecast on the future of online campaigns in the Philippines. It will also look at the limitations of the study as well suggest new areas of research. 1.6 Background of the Political Internet from West to East This section will first review the history of Web campaigning, beginning in North America to Europe, and lastly in some parts of the AsiaPacific region. Gibson (2004) argued that political parties from different parts of the world moved into cyberspace in the mid-1990s without having clearly- 6 defined ideas about why the Internet would prove useful, or how they should present themselves on it. 1.6.1 Campaigns in North America – While the Internet was used on a very limited, experimental basis by political organizations in the United States in the 1980s and early 1990s, not until the mid 1990s did it become a common tool for political communication and the management of political information (Graber, Bimber, Bennett, Davis and Norris, 2004). Gibson (2004) notes that although the Internet had been used in a limited capacity during the U.S. presidential elections of 1992, it was the 1996 election cycle that saw the start of the concerted cyber-campaign with the highprofile websites of Robert Dole and Bill Clinton. In 1998, meanwhile, successful Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Jessie Ventura utilized the Internet to mobilize young voters (Gibson 2004:97). Critics observed that candidate websites were static and dull, with offline content simply migrating to the online environment, often with little to no editing (Gibson, 2004:96). Other analysts examining sites from this era described them as mostly “brochureware” or “virtual billboards” (Foot and Schneider, 2006). Web campaigning was also largely seen as a gimmick or, at best, an ancillary to “real” campaigning. Powell and Cowart (2003) said that at first political campaigns used websites as a sort of proof that they, as candidates, were up to date with “it”, and were able to deal with the problems of the 21st century. The same authors also claimed that with the explosion of websites and the vast improvement in modern technology, 7 cyberspace became more directly useful to political campaigns with its virtual billboards that featured a wide range of information about candidates, travel schedules and fund-raising activities. There are those, however, who say that most political candidates avoid using the Internet in ways likely to reach the wired generation and fail to tap its networking capacities (Benett and Xenos, 2004). It was evident that throughout the years, the political Internet emerged as a critical component of U.S. campaign strategies (Howard, 2006). By the year 2000, the Internet had become virtually ubiquitous in presidential politics and was spreading rapidly among candidates and local parties (Gibson, 2004). According to Gibson, Internet campaigning appeared to have turned a corner in terms of its movement into mainstream electioneering after 2002, with Howard Dean’s use of the Web for quality cyber-electioneering. Here, Gibson notes, the Internet went beyond narrow fund-raising ambitions towards ‘real world’ voter mobilization efforts. Meanwhile, Canada’s political parties have also been early adopters of new information technologies because of the need to reach across vast distances and because they have been seen as a nationalizing instrument (Small, Taras and Danchuk, 2008). In their examination of the 2004 and 2006 federal elections, Small, Taras and Danchuk note that the major difference between U.S. and Canadian campaigns is the length of the election campaign period. While campaigns for party presidential nominations and senatorial contests can last well over a year, Canada’s parliamentary system allows the 8 ruling party at the time of the election to decide the duration of the campaign which can last from a minimum of thirty-six to a maximum of fifty-six days. This explains why websites of parties in Canada can go from full operation to reverting back to electronic brochures as soon as the campaign period is over. Laws covering election spending, also impacts on Web campaigning, such that fund-raising on party websites is not as important as in U.S. campaigns. In summary, the authors note that since the 2000 elections, party websites have evolved from electronic versions of lawn signs, into multimedia platforms that have been integrated into overall campaign strategies. In terms of interactivity and responsiveness, however, all of the political parties were wary in opening up their sites to full-blown debates, because their objective was to package and control the party’s message rather than engage in uncomfortable issues in the site. 1.6.2 Campaigns in Europe In tracking the development of Web campaigning from a global perspective, Gibson observed that cyber-campaigning became popular in other national contexts from the mid to late 1990s. She noted that British candidates used ICTs to communicate with voters, while parties from Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands to Greece and Portugal were seeing the importance of launching cyber campaigns. Political parties in Western Europe have long held a presence in cyberspace, given the high rates of usage among the electorate (Carlson and Strandberg, 2005). In their study that sought to answer whether the long-term high levels of Internet penetration in Finland 9 attracted and mobilized a new and varied strata of voters, Carlson and Strandberg found an over-representation of younger voters aged 18-24, males, the better-educated and those living in urban or semi-urban places. They also discovered that few voters looked for electionrelated information and visited party or candidate websites, implying that the Web is still not as important a source for political knowledge as newspapers and television. From the standpoint of parties, Carlson and Strandberg found that most sites resembled traditional brochures rather than new and interactive campaign outlets. In Belgium and the United Kingdom, the demographics of website visitors were also found to be similar to those in Finland (Hooghe and Vissers, 2006; Ward, Gibson and Lusoli, 2006). These findings suggest that site visitors are almost the same in Western Europe, where they merely check the site to gather electoral information rather than interact with the party politicians or other voters, or play an active role in the campaign. The cyber campaigns of other ‘wired’ nations in Western Europe such as Denmark, Sweden and Norway ‘have also not been trailblazers in campaigning online’ (Gibson, 2004). In Eastern Europe, particularly in Russia, party sites were observed to have an overall high quality in spite of lower Internet penetration levels than Southern Europe (March, 2003). March explains that new parties in the former Communist countries are keen to show their progressive credentials, thus explaining their proactive stance toward the new digital technologies. Gibson (2004) notes that for Southern Europe, the public’s low rate of Internet use in countries 10 such as Portugal, Greece, Italy and Spain contributes to greater evenness in parties’ performance, since the incentives for the dominant parties to channel significant resources towards Web development are reduced. On a last note, Castells (2004) contends that technologydriven, informational politics in Europe is a new historical trend shaping the entire world by successive waves, although under specific historical conditions that introduce substantial variations in political competition. 1.6.3 Campaigns in the Asia Pacific Region Parties in Australia and New Zealand were also jumping on the band wagon of online campaigning in 1998 and 1999, respectively, while among non-English speaking democracies, Japan showed keen interest in Web campaigning as early as 1995 (Gibson, 2004). Similar to the quality of U.S. sites, Gibson notes that efforts have also attracted their share of criticism for being too cautious and unimaginative with too much content taken from the offline environment. She adds that while political actors around the world did appear to be cognizant of the importance of entering cyberspace, they were rather unclear about what to do upon arrival. She, however, points out that it was not until South Korean president Roh Moo-Hyun turned to the Internet in early 2000 that cyber-campaigning was given a greater profile, transforming the face of electoral campaigning in his country and confirming the importance of a Web strategy for aspirants to political office across the world. The 2002 Korean presidential election was described as another ‘victory of the Internet’, in which creative website content and 11 continuous email communication allowed Roh and his team to build up his public profile and financial resources (Chung, 2003). In Asia, many political parties went online between the mid to late 1990s in the absence of regulation covering online campaigns, and also because of the inability of some states to police online communications (Gomez, 2005). According to Gomez, “the Internet now provides all political parties in the region an additional medium for communication, which has been adopted as part of the plethora of communication tools that parties now use.” Political parties’ use of the Internet in Asia also depends on the level of freedoms for political expression in a said country (Gomez, 2005:5). In Singapore for example, the extent to which the technology has been harnessed as a democratizing tool has been limited ((Soon and Kluver, 2007). When opposition parties here began to go online during election season, Gomez noted that the Internet came under regulation in 2004 via the Parliamentary (Election Advertising) Act. In Indonesia, meanwhile, the Internet began moving from campus cloisters to the communities in 1995. In the 1997 elections, the Internet provided the three legal parties with an opportunity to test the campaign value of having an Internet site (Hill, 2003). In quoting Andoko (1997), Hill noted that the Internet was seen by some commentators as a means of campaign communication which was not regulated by the government, unlike radio, television and print media for which the minister of information had a campaign protocol. Similarly in Malaysia, opposition parties deployed the Internet much 12 more effectively in rallying supporters, and online news sites such as Malaysiakini circumvented government regulation and publicized information which was not readily available in the mainstream media (Chin, 2003; Loo, 2003). The following section will provide a more detailed account of the political system in the Philippines, as well as the popular and media culture that shapes how elections and campaigns are carried out here. 1.7 The Philippines Gets Connected This section will review the history of the Internet and its use as a political tool in the country. It will also examine the diffusion of the technology and the profile of Internet users in the country. Such information will provide the reader with a better grasp of the socio-political environment in which cyber-campaigning in the Philippines is taking place. 1.7.1 Background and History In the Philippines, Web campaigning might still be considered a new way of reaching out to voters. While in the United States, campaign websites have evolved from being just online brochures in the mid-1990s to sophisticated mechanisms that allow interaction with the electorate today, the first Internet connection was established in the Philippines only in 1994 (Khan, 2006). Despite the low Internet penetration in the country, the growth of Internet cafes has allowed tech-savvy Filipinos access to this technology. Meantime, the Internet also connects with millions of Filipinos overseas, who are able to exercise their right to vote via the Overseas Absentee Voting law. In the Philippines, political parties as well as private organizations started 13 utilizing the Internet as a means to enlighten voters on candidates who were running in the 1998 presidential elections (Pabico, 2004). The timeline below shows the history of the use of the Internet as a political tool in the country. At the height of the second People Power Revolution against then President Estrada in 2001, the Artists for Social Action and Response (or ASAR, which loosely translated means annoyed) wrote and produced a music album that contained several witty and defamatory musical parodies about Estrada, his mistresses and cronies. The group’s recording of anti-Estrada music in MP3 format reached the market of Internet enthusiasts at home and abroad (Maslog, 2004). These, along with anti-Estrada jokes disseminated on the Web and on mobile phones further eroded Estrada’s credibility (Maslog, 2004:76). By 2001, there was a variety of sites which featured election-related Figure 1. Historical timeline noting significant milestones in the use of the Internet as a political tool in the Philippines January 2001, Anti – Estrada music and jokes are disseminated on mobile phones & the Internet March 1994, PhNet establishes first Internet connection in RP to the U.S. 1994 1998 Jan-May 1998, Political parties, socio-civic groups & individuals tap the Internet for the ’98 polls Feb – May 2004, More political parties and candidates vying for national office launch websites 2001 2004 2001, Election-related Sites fill the Web 14 information (Pabico, 2004). In the 2004 elections, all the presidential aspirants launched their own official websites, while two of the four candidates for vice president and fourteen out of fourty-eight senatorial candidates created sites for that year’s elections (Mirandilla, 2004). Studies revealed that most political parties and candidates did not maximize the potential of the Internet as a tool for political communication and that they merely used their websites as electronic brochures (Mirandilla, 2004; Cuevas, 2004). During this time it was also observed that political party websites served as alternative news sites containing party leaders’ unedited press statements (Gomez, 2005). Examples of these sites include the website of the Liberal Party of the Philippines and party-list groups ‘Akbayan’ and ‘Bayan Muna,’ which have representatives in the legislative branch of government. 1.7.2 Internet Infrastructure and User Profile A brief history of the birth of the Internet in the country and the technical infrastructure is provided by Rachel Khan (2006) in her book ‘Internet 101-the New Mass Medium for Filipinos’. The Internet was first accessed in the country in 1993 by multinational corporations such as Intel, Motorola and Texas Instruments to communicate with their mother companies in the United States. Limited e-mail access to the public was made available via the Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) and Philcom Internet stations before an academic Internet connection was established in 1994 via a 64Kbps connection to the United States. The link was later expanded to more learning institutions and other ‘preferred members’ to help augment the cost of 15 sustaining the international leased line. The exponential growth of the Internet arrived with the passage of Republic Act 7925, or the 1995 Public Telecommunication Act of the Philippines. This allowed telecommunication firms to offer ‘value-added services’ without a congressional franchise and various Internet start-ups to establish their own Internet service providers. Internet service continued to improve in the following years with the interconnection of more ISPs and the country’s connection to Japan’s Advanced Pacific Network backbone. This backbone which consists of many ultra-high bandwidth connections link together many different points around the world and allows data to be carried over long distances (http://www.techterms.com). In 2004, President Arroyo created the Commission on Information and Communication Technology (CICT) to be the lead agency in Internet governance and in advancing IT development in the country. In terms of industry regulation, the government believes that Internet services and content providers should practise self-regulation similar to the broadcast media. Other government regulations concerning the Internet are for promoting electronic commerce in the country. According to the Internet and Telecoms in the Philippines report (2006), there are almost 100 Internet service providers in the country, the majority of them having connections through backbones located in the United States. The country meanwhile has 264 valueadded service providers (VASPS) which offer Internet-related services among others, according to the National Statistical and Coordination 16 Board. Of the 264 VASPs offering Internet-related services such as access to the Internet (dial-up, leased line, broadband, cable, DSL, satellite), Web hosting, Web page development and design, VoiceOver Internet Protocol (VOIP), electronic commerce, and the like, 224 (84.8%) are located in Metro Manila or the National Capital Region (NCR), 26 (9.8%) are in the rest of Luzon, 9 (3.4%) are in the Visayas and 5 (1.9%) are in Mindanao (NSCB, 2006). Compared to the year 2006 when there were only 7,820,000 Internet users or less than 10 percent of the total population, there were already 14 million Internet users as of April 2008, or 15.1% of the total population estimated at more than 92 million (Internet World Stats). ACNielsen’s “Activate” survey shows that the majority of Filipinos between 13 and 30 years old access the Internet daily for at least an hour after work or school (and usually before bedtime). The average young urban Filipino is also actively using the Web, having two to three email addresses from Yahoo!, Hotmail or email.com (Maslog, 2003). However, due its lower cost, mobile phones are more widely used in the country by the so-called Generation Text, for the youth’s propensity in using Short Message Service or texting in communicating with one another. Apart from earning the title as the texting-capital of the world, the Philippines cliche was also established as the social networking capital of the world in a recent Universal McCann study. According to the survey entitled ‘Power to the People – Wave 3’, 83% of Filipinos who were Internet users were reported in March 2008 to belong to a social network, with Friendster being the 17 top choice, followed closely by MySpace, Facebook, Hi5 and Multiply. The survey noted that social networking is a means to connect people globally, especially for countries with high emigration like the Philippines and Mexico. AC Nielsen Media Philippines attributes the rise in Internet consumption to the growth in number of Internet cafes in urban areas and the cheap cost of going online. According to the earlier survey, Filipinos are also considered the top photo uploaders and Web video viewers, and second to South Korea in the number of blog readers and video uploaders (Kittelson, 2008). In citing AC Nielsen’s Netscan survey in the last quarter of 2002, Khan (2006) found that over half of those with Internet access belong to the upper and middle classes, which accounts for almost two out of three users. The same survey shows that, interestingly, “foreign (mostly U.S.) traffic makes up 90 percent of the consumers’ consumption” and that “connectivity to other Asia-Pacific countries is a small fraction compared to the U.S. connection.” Table 1. Statistical Data on the Philippines % of Total Population Source Internet Penetration 15.1% (as of 2007) ITU Mobile Phone Penetration 45% (as of 2006) Dow Jones News wires Text Messaging 250 million SMS/day National Statistical and Coordination Board 18 Of the country’s Internet users, 3.1 million (about 70 percent) are said to access the Internet using prepaid cards at Internet cafes. These cafes, which provide affordable Internet connection, are the products of government and private sector initiatives in bridging the digital divide in the country (Khan, 2006). Despite the country’s low personal computer (PC) penetration rate of less than 10% of the total population, the Internet café has provided access to online gaming and the Web to many Filipinos (Internet World Stats). The report on Internet and Telecoms projected that while the penetration rates in the Philippines are among the lowest in Asia, the Internet is positioned for growth with its deregulated market, strong government support for IT development and an increasingly Internetsavvy population. For one, the number of Internet users was expected to hit 21 million in 2008 (IDC). In a joint study by Yahoo! And Nielsen on Internet Habits of Filipinos, Internet use is growing even outside Metro Manila, particularly in urban cities in Mindanao. In the same study, it was revealed that social networking is the key online activity, and that one in three Filipinos Internet users have a blog, prompting Nielsen to declare that marketers and advertisers should reexamine their strategies in using the Internet to target consumers. The study also noted a slight drop in television viewership, with more Filipinos shifting to the Internet to acquire information from 98% in 2007 to 92 % in 2008. Those reading newspapers also decreased, from 19 % to 15% between 2007 and 2008 based on the study. 19 1.8 Political Environment The Philippines is among the few Southeast Asian nations that has had a rich historical tradition in electoral politics (Teehankee, 2006). It is a story of the Filipinos’ struggle to be part of a community of nations which believes in the fundamental equality of human beings, in the individual’s freedom to choose his leaders and to be chosen in turn, and his prerogative to be part of a process that chooses which system of governance is best for him (Carlos and Banlaoi, 1996). The EDSA or People Power Revolution of 1986 resulted in the ouster for Marcos, the collapse of his dominant political party and the installation of Aquino as president of the Philippines, whose revolutionary government laid the foundation for the 1987 Philippine Constitution (Tancangco, 1988). This constitution also paved the way for the emergence of a competitive multi-party system, as a result of the effective dismantling of the traditional political parties of the Marcos regime (Carlos and Banlaoi, 1996; Tancangco, 1988). Under the 1987 Constitution, the pre-martial law presidential form of government with the bicameral Congress was reestablished and national elections were synchronized with local elections (Teehankee, 2006). The President and the Vice-President are separately elected by a direct vote of the people through a simple plurality nationwide, with both serving a term of six years. The Philippine Congress consists of the Senate and House of Representatives, where half of the twenty-four senators are nationally elected at large every six years through simple plurality. No senator is allowed to serve more than two consecutive terms (www.comelec.gov.ph). 20 In the congressional elections that took place in 1987, the anti-Marcos sentiment played a role in shaping and defining the outcome of political alliances, and President Aquino’s personal endorsement of candidates was deemed crucial. While this election marked the period of democratic transition and reconstruction as pre-martial law political parties sought to reestablish their networks and new parties organized, most of these new groupings were ad hoc and personality-based organizations (Teehankee, 2006). Moreover, these parties engaged in the same clientelistic and parochial style of politics reminiscent of campaigns under the Marcos era (Teehankee, 2006: 89). In quoting Gamalinda, the campaign thus was reduced to a ‘poster and jingle war’ among the many candidates who were driven to accomplish name-recall more than the advancement of issues (Carlos and Banlaoi, 1996). In the first ever free and open presidential elections in 1992, under the new constitution, no less than seven candidates vied for the top post of the land, representing seven major political parties, such as the Nacionalista Party, the Liberal Party, Marcos’ Kilusang Bagong Lipunan or KBL and the Lakas-National Union of Christian Democrats (Carlos and Banlaoi, 1996: 148). The Lakas-NUCD emerged when then Defense Secretary Fidel V. Ramos, after losing the nomination of his party, the Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino (LDP) or Struggle of Filipino Democrats, organized the Lakas EDSA (Strength of EDSA) which later joined with the older National Union of Christian Democrats-United Muslim Democrats of the Philippines (Teehankee, 2006). It was only during this election that more stable political parties contributed to the development of an emergent multi-party system (Teehankee, 2006: 89). In the next round of synchronized elections in 1998, 21 there were eleven presidential candidates, with only two aspirants having the backing of political parties with established political machinery – House Speaker Jose de Venecia of the Lakas-NUCD-UMDP and Vice President Joseph Estrada of the Laban ng Makabayang Masang Pilipino or LAMMP (Struggle of the Nationalist Filipino Masses) (Teehankee, 2006: 92). The 2004 election for the presidency with its five presidential candidates was unusual because, since the first time in 1986, the incumbent president was running for office, due to the ascension into the presidency of then Vice President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo after Estrada’s ouster in 2001 (IPC, 2005). For the first time, a candidate had all the advantages, from political machinery to having access to state resources (IPC, 2005:7). Her rival, Fernando Poe Jr., however, was backed by an opposition-led coalition and had the advantage of popularity, having been an action film celebrity like Estrada. 1.8.1 Political Culture Political culture can be used to describe models explaining behavior and public opinion (Howard, 2006). Kluver (2005) defined political culture as the symbolic environment of political practice that is shaped by historical experiences and philosophical and religious traditions. This can also encompass cultural elements, such as the assumptions, expectations and values regarding political activity (Foot et al, 2003). Folk concepts, such as regarding leaders as parents, for one, are seen to have an obvious bearing on perceptions of political leadership (IPC, 2005). One study that explored the unique and colorful aspects of Filipino political culture revealed that the poor considered a leader “as provider and guide, and as one who thinks 22 about the future, and desires the good of the children” (IPC, 2005: 98). Their findings showed that the poor, who comprise the majority in the country, consider elections legitimate exercises for selecting leaders even though “the campaign period is seen as a time of extremes and excesses” (IPC, 2005:102). Furthermore, the study revealed that their vote is a thinking vote, one that is not swayed by candidate surveys (IPC, 2005: 96). In the manual “How to Win an Election,” Gonzales (2006) wrote that for half of the country’s population who live in the rural areas, where the totality of values, customs and traditions is called folk culture, government can be distant and inscrutable like the supreme deity of both the pre-colonial natives and the contemporary adherents of folk religion. This alienation can be traced to the long periods of colonialism under Spain and the United States in which a central government was imposed by foreign invaders (Gonzales 2006:10). Even though the poor consider electoral participation “an affirmation of patriotism and of being a Filipino,” this does not necessarily indicate a strong sense of nationhood since there are other civic duties besides voting. Gonzales further illuminated another major cause of this weak sense of nationhood, which he attributes to the historical connection between the Roman Catholic Church, the country’s dominant religious institution, and the colonial powers. Conservative pastors predominate in an institution that asserts the apostolic authority of the bishops and the primacy of the Pope. Gonzales said it remains unclear to what extent the hierarchical Church is a genuine democratizing force in society, since there were no 23 significant changes after it asserted that ‘people empowerment’ is necessary – implying greater equality in both political and economic matters, more democracy, and more participation. Specifically, the Catholic Church has been known for its influence over its large membership during elections, while the Iglesia Ni Cristo, an independent Christian religious organization in the Philippines, has long been associated with bloc voting (Rebullida, 2006). This bloc, which has around 1.5 million members, according to pollster Felipe Miranda, is a ‘strategic swing vote, especially in multi-party electoral contests for the Senate’ (Mangahas and Olarte, 2002). The cultural tendency of the masses to seek mediators, patrons, and parent-like authority figures is understood better by traditional politicians and members of political dynasties than by reform-minded citizens out to challenge them (Gonzales 2006:16). According to veteran poll strategist Perry Callanta, most voters nowadays give more weight to the ability of candidates to address their personal needs, than to candidates’ platform of government. From the researcher’s personal experience of covering electoral campaigns as a political reporter, candidates are also known to attend to a variety of social obligations, such as visiting funeral wakes, sponsoring weddings and baptisms and participating in fiestas and other local celebrations where they are expected to donate prizes. “Wine, women, and song,” or even cash, were meanwhile anticipated by those who expected to be wooed for their votes during the Marcos era (Hofilena, 2006). This practice, however, is still quite commonplace especially in rural areas. 24 Citing Cruz, Hofilena (2006) noted that in extreme cases, some candidates engage in mudslinging and going as far as eliminating opponents through violent means, with political rivalries resulting in casualties in both rural and urban parts of the country. Meanwhile, the so-called 3 Gs of winning elections -- guns, goons and gold -- still persist in some parts of the country (Callahan, 2000). 1.8.2 Media Environment Apart from political culture, the media too play an active role that shapes and gets influenced in turn by the campaign. The mass media’s manner of coverage has contributed greatly to the image of the election campaign as a ‘cockfight, horserace or boxing match,” where the coverage focuses on the personality traits of the candidates, their sensational statements against each other, their perceived standings, and the trends in the race or match based on the opinions of pundits and formal and informal surveys (Coronel, 2004). The commercialization of the media, which makes it imperative for newspapers and broadcast stations alike to make a profit or to rate well, is one reason for the inadequate media coverage, where insufficient attention is given to the platforms of the candidates and their positions on social issues (Coronel, 2004:58). This can be illuminated by the observation that the media tend to reflect the class interests of their owners, advertisers and readers (McCargo, 2003). For the rural poor, however, it is not the media nor the church who are considered influential, but the family and the political party. Furthermore, both urban and rural poor are aware that the media 25 provide inadequate information on the accomplishments and plans of candidates (IPC, 2005). The online media on the other hand was seen to challenge traditional media in providing the public with more comprehensive data about candidates and the elections in general (Pinlac, 2007). News organizations were observed to have improved in their election coverage since their foray in online reporting during the 2001 and 2004 elections, while socio-civic groups formed their own election-monitoring sites and related news portals contributed to voter education for the 2007 polls. Election propaganda, on the other hand, is allowed on television, cable television, radio, newspapers or any other medium, subject to the allowed expenses of candidates and parties according to Republic Act 9006 or the Fair Election Act. Recently, the COMELEC granted the petition of a private firm seeking approval to display political advertisements via the Internet. In a COMELEC resolution, dated April 17, 2007, the commission approved en banc the petition of Cyberads Inc. to display the political ads of candidates in about 1,000 Internet cafes nationwide that would allow voters’ access to a link to the website of those running in the May 14 polls (Valderama, 2007). In approving the petition, the COMELEC said that this new form of election propaganda, which they referred to as digital media advertising, was in line with its modernization program to provide voters access to information and education materials. Furthermore, any candidate can avail himself of these Internet ads, which will allow candidates equal exposure time (www.comelec.gov.ph). 26 Television still gets the lion share of political advertisements, with its 95-percent reach among Filipino households based on a study by the Asia Research Organization. Candidates with a well-oiled machinery will have to spend at least 62 times more than what the law allows, since the ceiling set by the Omnibus Election Code for campaign spending are outdated (Hofilena, 2006). Despite the high costs of advertising on television, campaign managers argue that at least these assure wider access to voters, and costs less than going around the country in traditional campaign sorties. 1.8.3 2007 Midterm Elections In accordance with the Constitution, legislative and local elections were held in the Philippines on May 14, 2007. This election was seen to be another test of political survival for the Arroyo government, which continued to be hounded by questions of legitimacy, corruption allegations and declining approval ratings in her second term of office (Hickens, 2007). The administration party’s new alliance called TEAM UNITY brought together re-electionist senators from the ruling coalition (Joker Arroyo of KAMPI or Partner of the Free Filipino) and Edgardo Angara of another party recently aligned with the administration - the LDP (Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino) or Struggle of Filipino Democrats. Also joining the slate were incumbent last-term congressmen, celebrities, ex-senators previously aligned with former President Joseph Estrada, the whistleblower that paved the way for Estrada’s impeachment, and a couple of local executives who were virtual unknowns in the national political scene 27 (see Table 2). On the other hand, among those who represented the coalition of the Genuine Opposition (GO) were incumbent last-term congressman Francis Escudero, re-electionist senator Manuel Villar who served as Senate President before and during the campaign season, and detained Navy officer Antonio Trillanes IV who was among the leaders charged with rebellion for the failed Oakwood mutiny against the Arroyo government in July of 2003. Although originally running under the banner of the opposition, Francis Pangilinan of the Liberal Party ran as an independent candidate midway through the campaign due to some disagreements within the coalition (Table 3). Table 2. Senatorial Slate of the administration coalition (Team-Unity) Candidate Party Status and Background Angara, Edgardo‘Ed’ J. Aquino-Oreta, Teresa LDP NPC Arroyo, Joker P. Defensor, Michael T. KAMPI Liberal Party PDSP LakasCMD LakasCMD LakasKampi LakasCMD LakasCMD NPC Re-electionist Former Senator and Estrada Ally Re-electionist; Former Cabinet member a Kiram, Jamalul D. Magsaysay, Vicente P. Montano, Cesar Pichay, Prospero Jr. Recto, Ralph G. Singson, Luis Sotto III, Vicente Zubiri, Juan Miguel LakasCMD With Official Website Yes Yes Yes Yes Sultan of Sulu Governor of Zambales No No TV and Film Actor No Former Congressman Yes Re-electionist No Governor of Ilocos Sur and former Estrada ally Former Senator and Estrada ally Former Congressman Yes Yes No 28 Table 3. Senatorial Slate of the opposition coalition (Genuine Opposition) Candidate Aquino, Benigno Simeon Cayetano, Alan Peter S. Coseteng, Anna Escudero, Francis Joseph Lacson, Panfilo M. Legarda, Loren B. Party Liberal Party NP Independent NPC UNO NPC Status and Background Former Congressman Former Congressman Former Senator Former Congressman Re-electionist Former Senator and TV personality Osmena, John Henry UNO Former Senator Pimentel III, Aquilino PDP-Laban Lawyer Roco, Sonia M. AD Widow of Former Senator and Cabinet Member Raul Roco Trillanes IV, Antonio F. Independent Detained Military Officer Villar Jr., Manuel B. NP Re-electionist and former House Speaker Source: COMELEC, gmanewstv.com and inq7.net. With Official Website Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes No Yes Yes Anti-Arroyo candidates consistently led in surveys conducted by the local polling stations, with administration candidates trailing from midway up to the last stretch of the campaign period (www.pulseasia.com.ph). From the official list of the twelve winning senatorial candidates, seven were from the opposition who occupied the top 6 slots, while three candidates were elected from the administration party, with two independent bets rounding up the list (www.inquirer.net). Table 4. COMELEC tally as of June 14, 2007 29 From this list of winners, it was observed that majority of the winning candidates waged Internet campaigns via their official campaign websites. While this study is not concerned with proving whether online campaigns can help win an election, this study will investigate candidates’ motivations for engaging in such efforts. This can partially be explained by one local study which examined the online political sphere in the 2004 presidential elections, which suggested that the lack of laws regulating online campaigns was one of the reasons for candidates’ utilization of the technology (Cuevas, 2004). 1.9 Chapter Summary In reviewing the evolution and quality of online campaigns from western societies to some Asia Pacific nations including the Philippines, several themes can be culled. First, that the quality of online campaigns are dependent on several factors that include the kind of political system prevailing in a country, the duration of the campaign period, existing regulation or lack thereof covering online campaigns, as well as the stage or level of development of the Internet at a particular point in time. Second, political parties and candidates across the globe, more often than not, are wary about opening up their sites for communication with site visitors, the most common reason being, that politicians are afraid to lose control over the message being put out in the website especially from site visitors. In examining the quality of online campaigns in many parts of the world, it can meanwhile be argued, that the level of Internet penetration prevailing in a country has no direct bearing on the creativity and attractiveness of websites, as proven by the case of Russia in Eastern Europe, and the Philippines. Despite having low Internet penetration rates, candidate websites here were found to be exceptionally good in terms of offering an interactive information source. Lastly, it was apparent that the Internet provides an additional 30 medium for political actors and parties, with the technology seen as most crucial for members of the political opposition. Given this global perspective which includes a background on the Philippine political system and campaign environment, the profile of Internet and mobile phone penetration and their users, the following chapter will undertake a review of the related literature on Web campaigns, covering the various issues and concepts that have occupied scholars since the emergence of information and communications technologies. 31 Chapter Two LITERATURE REVIEW 2. Marketing and Internet Use in Political Campaigns Since the 1940s, scholarship in the field of political communication have examined the relationship between politics and “new” media, such that researchers sought to determine the effects of media on the political knowledge, attitudes and behavior of users through various methods (Foot and Schneider 2006). Since the 1990s, one question that incites great debate among scholars is whether the Internet revolutionizes politics and the manner in which it is used by political actors to reach out to the electorate. When the first research reports were published, the debates stemmed from the youth of the technology, the dominance of U.S. studies in the literature, theoretical diversity and the lack of integration across disciplines and subfields, as well as across methodologies (Graber et al, 2004). On the other hand, theorists were also in disagreement about expanding marketing techniques into domains other than business. D.J. Luck (1969) branded as evil the new marketing concept that also encompassed the marketing of ideas, people and places (Kotler, 1972; Mauser, 1983). With the growth of the political marketing industry in the last thirty years, it was inevitable that scholars would pay attention to the marketing character of election campaigning (Kelly, 1956; Glick, 1967; Nimmo, 1970; Lilleker and Lees-Marshment, 2005), and lately, to the use of the Internet as a marketing vehicle (Bowers-Brown, 2003; Drummond, 2006; Newman, 2006). This chapter review the literature, presenting two sides of the argument which traditionally occupies studies on Web campaigns, between the camps of the so-called cyberoptimists and the cyber-skeptics. The chapter will also highlight how the Internet is 32 seen to facilitate political movements across the globe. Following this will be a discussion of the nature of political marketing and how this practice spread throughout societies and later in cyberspace, with the rise of information and communications technologies. This chapter will also tackle some principles of Webbased marketing that could apply to campaign websites in order to more effectively promote candidates. These two sections will serve as the overarching conceptual framework that will guide the analyses of this study’s findings. The chapter will also discuss how the Internet and campaign websites in particular, can foster an active public sphere where citizens can engage each other in critical debate. Lastly, this chapter will identify four research questions that this thesis will address. 2.1 Potential for Political Empowerment Scholars have observed the Internet to be an ‘electronic agora’ or an ‘electronic republic’ where existing power structures could be challenged, and citizens are in charge of the communications network (Rheingold, 1993; Grossman, 1995). The belief of Internet enthusiasts that the technology can reconnect people and make them better-informed and more engaged citizens is reflected in the mobilization theory, which argues that the Internet can attract new types of citizens, particularly those who are less politically-engaged offline, because of the technology’s accessibility and relatively low cost (Norris, 1999). As for political parties and actors, the Internet is seen to offer a better foothold for the lesser-known players to extend their reach to a new audience and galvanize support through means other than mass media (Gibson, 2004). Margolis and Resnick (2000) belong to the other side of the argument, suggesting that the Internet tends to reflect and reinforce the patterns of behavior of the real world, thus resulting in the normalization of 33 online politics. According to them, this is politics as usual, since one would encounter familiar parties, candidates, interest groups and news media in cyberspace. Some evidence points in this direction, where entities who dominate politics in the real world, have become more adept at exploiting the Web for political purposes than non-mainstream candidates and groups (Carlson and Strandberg, 2005; Cuevas, 2004; Margolis, Resnick and Levy, 2003). In the same way, citizens who were not politically-motivated in the offline realm, would also not find political websites appealing. This was shown in the findings of a cross-national survey that indicated that those who take advantage of the opportunities for electronic civic engagement are activists most likely to participate via conventional channels (Norris, 2001). Furthermore, that study showed how improbable it was for digital politics to reach the disengaged, the apathetic and disinterested, ‘if they chose to devote their time and energies on multiple alternative sites from the stock market to games and music.’ While it has yet to be proven whether or not the Internet has made Filipinos more engaged in political affairs, and whether it has leveled the playing field for candidates and political parties, one thing is for sure. For a democratic nation like the Philippines, the Internet has provided that other critical space where candidates and voters alike can in simple terms, get to know each other better. This is an important starting point in a media and personality-driven elections where much of the focus is on the superficial, while the substantial information about candidates’ performance and track record, their advocacies and platform of governance take a back seat according to Malou Mangahas, executive director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism. Campaign websites, in particular, could serve as 34 effective vehicles not only to galvanize the support of the online public in supporting not just their candidacies, but in educating voters about important national issues. Through two-way interactive features of websites, voters could potentially engage their future leaders in a meaningful dialogue on vital concerns that otherwise get drowned out in the traditional media with its limited airtime and space for publication. Campaign websites could thus empower the electorate, provided they present a wealth of information about candidates from various sources, and the opportunity for immediate feedback from site visitors as well as open a dialogue with the candidate or campaign. 2.2 Global Medium for Political Movements As a result of globalization and informationalization which works through wealth, technology and power, Internet-based networking is no longer an instrument of organization and struggle but has evolved into a new form of social interaction, mobilization and decision making (Castells, 2004). According to Castells, this results in a new political culture where networking takes place without any central authority, but between the local and the global so that ‘the movement can think locally, rooted in its identity and interests, and act globally where the sources of power are.’ In analyzing the environmental movement, which he argues is the most comprehensive and influential movement of our time, environmentalists used the Internet to coordinate action and information and to build networks on a global scale (Castells, 2004:187). Another testament to the ‘techno-utopians’ claim that the Internet favors the economically and politically marginalized, is the Zapatista rebellion in Southern Mexico, which owed its success to the technology in re-energizing the opposition and pushing for political reform 35 (Castells, 2004: 82). The armed insurgents used a network of discussion groups, lists, newsgroups and Web pages to communicate with their sympathizers in the country and abroad (Wallis, 2003). Meantime, cybercommunication also served to intensify the feminist movement with more efficient ways of quicky and globally disseminating information, that impacted on women’s lives in the political and personal context (Aragon and Sampaoi, 1998). The Web has also lent itself to right-wing extremists, whose far-right materials found an accessible, unregulated and global medium (Copsey, 2003). In recent years, the literature has also branded the Web as an ‘alternative Internet’ that is used by a range of groups and organizations who work against the dominant and expected practices in the media to include Indymedia journalists who are political in less progressive ways (Atton, 2004). The role of the Internet is also underscored in challenging authoritarian regimes, or where governments try to impose controls over the technology, who yet find difficulty in silencing critical voices (Norris, 2000). In countries like Malaysia, Vietnam and China, the Internet is the latest avenue to promote openness, and that which authorities recognize could not be regulated according to the Southeast Asian Press Alliance. Particularly in Singapore, where the government attempts to clamp down on the Internet, political groups are still able to practice a subtle form of cyberactivism due to certain features of the technology (Soon and Kluver, 2007). Meanwhile in Malaysia, following the 1998 political turmoil in politics, the opposition utilized the Internet to circumvent government-controlled media through e-mail, news groups and sites such as Malaysiakini.com (Chin, 2003). The technology was widely regarded to have changed the face of local politics in the recently36 concluded 2008 election, as it boosted the popularity of opposition bloggers who vied for and eventually won seats in parliament (Tarrant, 2008). Websites have also been examined in terms of creating cultural resistance by marginal political parties, such as the case of the Taiwan Independence Party (Chung, 2004), and resistance identities as in the cases of the Warnet Association and Reformasi of Indonesia (Lim, 2003). In the Philippine context, campaign websites of those who brand themselves as reform candidates, and who usually represent the political opposition are finding new battleground for promoting themselves as the alternative choice, to the electorate based in the country and overseas. Apart from the mainstream media that gives them exposure, the Internet, through online media, bloggers and their individual campaign websites allow such candidates wider room to raise more awareness about their qualifications, including the advocacies they are promoting. Given that the Philippines is freer than its neighbors in the region, campaign websites are made more relevant as they are seen to further enhance the democratic process in the selection of the country’s leaders. 2.3 Marketing Candidates Whereas marketing is referred to by the American Marketing Association as ‘the performance of business activities that direct the flow of goods and services from producer to consumer’, others are of the belief that the term should also encompass other functions outside of business (Kotler, 1972; Mauser, 1983). This includes the realm of politics, where political marketing is observed as a global practice where voters choose parties as consumers choose products (Lilleker and Lees-Marshment, 2005). However, 37 unlike products whose package contents can be found on labels, citizens are able to distinguish the different brands of political parties from the platform of candidates and the personalities of politicians (Newman, 2006). The following sub-sections will discuss the concepts behind the growth of political marketing, its impact across the world, and particularly, on online campaigns. 2.3.1 The Science of Electoral Campaigns Conventional campaigning evolved from intuitive practice to the more scientific political marketing due to the ‘substantial growth of improved marketing research, sales analyses and marketing organizations, and their resulting attraction to the political domain’ (Kotler, 1982). Citing Scammel, Schaferrer (2006) noted that the U.S. consultancy industry was borne out of the growth of political marketing over the past three decades, with clients reaching as far as Europe and Asia. Accompanying the growth of this industry was the increasing global trend of copying the American-style ‘video politics’ that made use of television and image-making that catered to the media (Blumler and Gurevitch, 1995). At the same time, the advent of a 24-hour news cycle has also been observed to push politicians to rely on political marketing machinery to manage their brand identities (Newman, 2006). Another significant development in political campaigns was the Americanisation or internationalisation of consumerism, where the global public is thinking and behaving more and more like a consumer in all areas of life (Barber, 1996; Berger, 1997). Thus emerged the political consumer who is both critical and challenging towards those who hold positions of influence in society, and who expects them to listen to public opinion (Lilleker and 38 Lees-Marshment, 2005). According to Lilleker and Lees-Marshment (2005:06) the distinction should be made between political marketing and advertising or selling, the former having to do with responding to the demands of the market. In determining what comprises political marketing, Castells quotes Abramson in enumerating that constant opinion-polling, feedback systems between polling and politicking, media spinning, computerized direct mailing, including ‘phone banks, and real time adjustments of candidates and issues to the format that could win’ are parts of this practice that further transformed American politics in the last decades of the twentieth century. It has become apparent to social scientists that more and more electoral campaigns in liberal democracies mimick those of the U.S. (Bowler and Farrel, 1992; Farell, 1996; Butler and Ranney, 1992). The United States became the role model in modernizing the publicity process, given the liberal utilization of mass media for campaign purposes in the country and the kind of electoral as well as candidate-centered system that exists there (Schafferer, 2006). This was true even for British parties which had previously seen few incentives to use the Web, since well-entrenched party machines and the relatively localized nature of election campaigning meant that traditional communication tools worked just as well if not better (Ward, Gibson and Lusoli, 2006). While at first, the Conservative party website was among those that did not maximize the opportunities that the Web technology offered in the 1997 elections, their party staff soon turned to various Republican organizations in the U.S. in order to learn from their approaches and experiences in mapping out the party’s online marketing strategy for the 2001 UK General Election (Bowers-Brown, 2003). 39 In Asia, the use of the Internet to promote candidates varies, depending on the technological diffusion and political culture, including regulation and assumptions regarding politics (Kluver et al, 2007). Nonetheless, it can be observed that parties and candidates reflect to some extent the U.S.-style of Web campaigning in their online efforts. This bandwagon effect of technology-driven information politics is advanced by Castells (2004). He argues that the electronic media, including the Internet, have become the privileged space of politics where everyone ends up playing the same game although at varying degrees. In this ‘crisis of democracy’, Castells further claims that while ‘not all politics can be reduced to images, sounds, or symbolic manipulation,’ he argues that ‘without it, there is no chance of winning or exercising power’. Thus, political actors operate around the media, for example by leaking information to advance a given personal or political agenda. The Internet is also becoming a useful tool for influencing candidate images and perceptions about them by journalists, who serve as opinion leaders who interpret and disseminate the information coming from political operatives to the rest of the citizenry (Newman, 2006). In addition, the Internet has become a vehicle for campaign propaganda, a forum for controlled debate and a device for mobilizing supporters (Norris, 2000). With politics now in electronic space, Castells (2004) writes that politicians are shaped within the overarching principles governing news media, which include the race for audience ratings, in competition with entertainment, and the necessary detachment from politics in order to foster credibility. Digital politics is also now witness to candidate images that have been personalized, built up, and sometimes destroyed by 40 scandals (Castells, 2004: 398). In the Philippine context, it is projected that the effect of the increasing influence of communications technologies in the formation of political opinion, will also tend to make voter decision-making more transient, more moody, and increasingly a product of the issues of the day that cut across the increasingly smaller and more defined constituencies (Magno, 1994). The following are examples of how other political actors across the globe have succumbed to this new style of campaigning, aided by the technology. The 1996 Lower House Election in Japan was noteworthy because almost all political parties and a number of candidates created campaign-oriented websites, influenced by the online electioneering of U.S. presidential candidates that same year (Tkach-Kawasaki, 2007). All in all however, Japanese parties’ Internet campaigns were restricted by online regulation by the government as well as the nature of their party system, because after emerging from a long period of a one-party rule, old and new parties preferred to cultivate a relationship with the masses offline, instead of appealing to a smaller online community (Gibson, 2004). South Korea’s political and electoral system meantime benefitted from the country’s highspeed communication network and huge number of Internet users (Kim and Park, 2007). In particular, Roh Moo Hyun’s victory in the presidential election of 2002 was largely attributed to an extensive Web presence that included a website with a rich, interactive experience with video clips and online audio endorsements from rock stars and celebrities (Kluver and Banerjee, 2005). In the Philippines, candidate websites in the 2004 presidential elections promoted aspirants via electronic brochures that were 41 lacking in interactive elements (Cuevas, 2004; Mirandilla, 2004). Political party websites, apart from promoting their candidates, also served as alternative news sites that displayed original press statements which were not subjected to editing by publishers (Gomez, 2005). All in all, it was observed that websites produced by political actors in the Philippines were more likely to be similar to websites produced by parties in the United States, than they are to be similar to websites produced by advocacy groups in the Philippines (Kluver et al, 2007). 2.3.2 Websites as Marketing Tools The use of the campaign website as a political marketing tool that targets electoral consumers has been documented by several scholars (Roper, 1999; Norris, 2000; Bowers-Brown, 2003; Schafferer, 2006; Newman, 2006). This packaging of candidates, such that they can be ‘sold’ to voters, involves spin doctors, media consultants and public relations experts who work to manage their image (Webster, 2006) is facilitated by the growth of other means to persuade the public. Despite the rejection of this marketing approach to politics by some, this has become an important part of the process (Drummond, 2006) such that in the U.S., the political Internet later proved beneficial to some candidates in terms of raising funds and recruiting volunteers (Powell and Cowart, 2003). The Internet likewise grew popular among U.S. citizens who followed political developments and participated in online discussions (Rice and Katz, 2003). From a marketing perspective, the campaign website through its various features can serve as an effective tool to promote candidates in a 42 number of ways (Bowers-Brown, 2003). Firstly, the campaign, just like a marketing-oriented organization, should rationalize the creation of the website, establish a clear purpose for it, plan its content and decide who will manage it. The campaign should likewise plan how the website would fit into the overall marketing strategy, in order to successfully position it and market the candidate’s ‘brands’. As the candidates become the political brands of a political party, they need to sell hope to people with a clearly-defined brand image, yet with a broad overall appeal (Newman, 2006). Only then can the websites effectively extend candidates’ marketing reach and offer all kinds of information about themselves via a variety of interactive formats. Newman (2006) also recommends that data be regularly updated on the site, by responding with immediacy to stories or issues that could potentially destroy or build-up the brand reputation of a candidate or political party. It is also widely believed that the Internet is going to play a more important role in campaigns, as more and more sophisticated younger voters familiar with the Web are turning off their television sets and going off into cyberspace instead to define and become familiar with the brand images of politicians (Newman, 2006:200). In addition, Newman noted that since unexpected situations as well as opinion leaders constantly re-define the image of politicians, a brand strategy should be consistent and pegged on a few key ideas. When it comes to candidates, the same rules that are used in offline campaigns may also apply to Web campaigning where they still have to be able to emotionally and positively connect to the audiences, communicate complex issues that are easy for site visitors to understand, position their brand in a concise and easily-digestible manner, and to deftly re-position this when 43 the need arises (Newman, 2006:202). However, the emergence of scientific polling gives candidates the advantage of marketing research, which determine the profile of voters and their preferences for what candidates should stand for, which in turn defines the political brands of candidates based on the research results (Newman, 2006:205). Secondly, engaging voters in a participative manner is also observed to be a good marketing practice (Henn, et al, 2002; Newman, 2006). This can be understood through the concept of interaction, which could occur between users via conversations on a forum or chatroom (McMillan, 2002), or between people and computers, and between computers through software, hardware and networks (Stromer-Galley, 2004). As scholars struggle with producing an inclusive definition on what constitutes interactivity, it helps to operationalize the concept. This can include hyperlinks which allow site visitors to examine external sources of information by clicking on a link in the site (Trammel et al, 2006). In the meantime, studies on online campaigns have shown voters’ increasing demand for interactivity from candidate websites, particularly in allowing them options to select the information that they prefer (StromerGalley, 2002; Park & Sejung, 2002). Based on these studies, it would seem that sites which exhibited interactive features piqued the interest of visitors and gave them a sense of control over access to information as well as of the campaign dialogue. One other advantage of marketing candidates on websites is that candidates can widen their access to geographically hard-to-reach voters, and even target specific groups through the use of specialized page content and narrow-casting of important content (Bowers-Brown, 2002). In political 44 communication, narrow-casting is when candidates directly contact voters, (Kang, 2005) which in this case, is facilitated by the Internet. Meanwhile, the commercially-oriented conceptual framework developed by Berthon et al (1998) identifies guidelines for effective Web marketing that can also apply to campaign websites. These include the awareness efficiency whereby the site is advertised in the campaign organization’s promotional materials; locatability and attractibility which is concerned with converting Web surfers into ‘hits’, by registering with major Internet service providers and search engines, and having an attractive homepage that will sustain the interest of site visitors; contact efficiency, which refers to the need for ‘hits’ to become ‘visits’ whereby the information on the site will be used; conversion efficiency, which refers to whether visitors can become customers who will then decide to ‘purchase’; and lastly; retention efficiency, which has to do with the customer revisiting the site frequently. The ICS Report Cards Criteria (2000) puts the overall quality of appearance and ease of navigation as a critical component to a successful website. Drummond’s (2006) modified construct of the expanded website assessment model likewise offers a useful guide to evaluating websites from a political marketing perspective. Under his model, the site can be evaluated using the characteristics of information, system quality, design, navigation, credibility and privacy. 2.3.3 An Active Public Sphere Campaign websites, through the features that encourage communication between candidates and visitors, can be understood through the concept of the public sphere, similar to Habermas’ ideal of an arena of 45 rational and critical debate, independent of government and partisan economic forces (Habermas, 1962). Critiques stemming from his deliberative model of one universal public sphere (Calhoun, 1992) have found other scholars examining various subaltern public spheres (Fraser, 1992) as well as online subaltern publics which have been argued to ‘influence the wider publics given appropriate resources’ (Zhang, 2006). In yet another version of the public sphere, the ‘Mediapolis’ is described by Silverstone (2006) as ‘the mediated public space where contemporary political life increasingly finds its place, both at national and global levels.’ Silverstone draws inspiration from Arendt and Beck’s cosmopolitan view of this polis that transcends geographical and physical boundaries, where people interact with one another (Dayan, 2007). This new arena for discussion is seen to be more accessible today than it ever was, especially given the ease with which one may nowadays amass information from the Internet (Webster, 2006). Some believe that the Internet can lead to a new realm of enlightenment in which discourse flows freely among politically-astute citizens via bulletin boards, chat groups, listservs, email, and multi-use domains (Rheingold, 1993), while others hold a liberal-pessimistic view that more information will not result in greater understanding or wisdom (Schwartz, 2004). Skeptics in particular, point to the global and social divides in Internet access that result in amplifying the voice of the affluent and welleducated, while further isolating the apathetic and the underprivileged (Davis and Owen, 1998). Furthermore, matters of public policy are seen to be too complicated and citizens too distracted to attend to such issues (Margolis and Resnick, 2000). On the other hand, Giddens (2002) points out that most 46 people are not becoming disinterested in politics as such, but are merely cynical about the claims that politicians make for themselves. 2.4 Research Questions Internet use for political purposes is still in its infancy in the Philippines, compared to its more advanced uses in other societies. Nevertheless, the Philippines, with its U.S.-patterned political structure, culturally-distinct system of electoral campaigns and current rate of Internet diffusion, the online campaigns launched by local candidates are likely to manifest their own peculiar brand. Without any specific government regulation that targets online campaigns, the Internet is a free-for-all medium that is being tapped by political actors in the country to make an impact. This thesis thus seeks to answer the following research questions: RQ1: How did the candidates use their websites to promote themselves to the electorate? RQ2: What were the candidates’ motivations in using the Internet for political campaigning? RQ3: What were the audience perceptions of the candidates’ Internet campaigns? RQ4: Did the Internet campaigning of Filipino candidates accord with popular trends in Internet campaigning or were there distinct Filipino practices and characteristics? The succeeding chapter will detail the various methods this study employed to arrive at a comprehensive website evaluation and an enlightening examination from both candidates and audiences of online campaigns. The first part will detail the sampling strategy of the study, while the succeeding sections will explain the 47 methodology in evaluating the websites, as well as the method for interviewing candidates and carrying out the focus group discussions. The last section will detail how it will investigate popular and local trends in Web campaigning. 48 Chapter Three METHODOLOGY 3. Multi-method Approach This study employed a multi-method approach in addressing the four research questions. It borrowed the use of content analysis in describing and examining the features of campaign websites, and complemented this with in-depth interviews with the candidates being promoted on the sites or their campaign managers. This study likewise tapped focus group interviews in determining the sentiments, expectations and opinions of target audiences about online campaigns. This chapter will be divided into the following sections: the first part will detail the sampling strategy of the study; the succeeding sections will explain the methodology for the content analysis of the websites, to be followed by the strategy for interviewing the candidates and their campaign managers. The next portion of the chapter will explain the method used for interviewing various focus groups, while the last section will again make use of content analyses in comparing foreign and local trends in campaign websites. 3.1 Sampling Strategy Official websites had to be identified and selected using a convenience and purposive sampling approach. I first conducted a check on which official candidates had working websites before the start of the official campaign period, then proceeded to select six websites based on my prior professional working relationship with the candidates or owners of the sites in my former capacity as political correspondent for the government television network in the Philippines. This allowed me easy access to interview the candidates and their campaign managers or website producers, and provided an advantage in 49 checking for reliability and validity of data results. The responses of the candidates and their campaign staff provided illuminating data on the second research question on what explains their unique adoption of campaign websites respectively. Since I was interviewing some of my former colleagues in the focus groups, I was conscious of the need to practice reflexivity in the conduct of my data gathering and analysis so as to ensure objectivity and neutrality. To this end, the process of playing back video and audio tapes containing the interviews with individual respondents, as well as with focus group participants, allowed me to look back on my approach and method that guided my future actions. The presence of third parties in the person of a camera operator likewise helped to ensure professionalism during the conduct of the interviews. While it was difficult to maintain absolute critical distance with respondents, particularly with the politicians, it is worth noting that my correspondence with the candidates when I was a political reporter was only fleeting and restricted to the work environment and that I did not know or socialize with any of them in my personal capacity. The six websites selected thus represents a cross-section of senatorial candidates from the two major political coalitions as well as independent candidates who vied for a slot in the 12-person senate race. Table 2 below shows the study sample of six senatorial candidates whose official websites were selected before the May 14, 2007 polls. Since political parties were grouped into two major coalitions – Team Unity (TU) for the administration, and Genuine Opposition (GO) for the political opposition, this study will also make use of this categorization. While both coalitions also had their 50 respective websites carrying their standard bearers, these sites were not included in the study. Represented are two candidates from the administration coalition (Team Unity), two from the opposition coalition (Genuine Opposition) and another two senatorial aspirants who were classified in this study as independent candidates. Table 5. Study Sample of Candidates and Coalitions Represented Candidate Political Status Party/ Coalition Official Official Website Name ANGARA, Edgardo ‘Ed’ ARROYO, Joker Incumbent re-electionist Senator Incumbent re-electionist Senator Incumbent last-term Congressman/ First Senate candidacy Incumbent re-electionist Senator LDP/Team Unity www.edangara.com Kampi/Team Unity NPC/Genuine Opposition www.pipolsdragon.com.ph Liberal Party/ Independent www.kiko.com.ph Incumbent re-electionist senator Detained Military officer and First Senate candidacy Nacionalista Party/ Independent Genuine Opposition www.mannyvillar.com.ph ESCUDERO, Francis Joseph ‘Chiz’ PANGILINAN, Francis ‘Kiko’ VILLAR, Manuel ‘Manny’ TRILLANES, Antonio ‘Sonny’ www.chizescudero.com www.trillanes.org.magdalo Five of the respondents whose official campaign websites were examined were incumbent officials before running in the 2007 midterm elections. Four were re-electionist senators, namely Angara, Arroyo, Pangilinan and Villar, while Escudero was serving his last term as congressman when he joined the senatorial contest for the first time in his political career. Navy officer Antonio Trillanes was detained for mutiny and rebellion charges against the Arroyo government when he vied for a senate seat for the first time in his political career. Incidentally, all the subjects selected for this study won in the elections, with Trillanes presently carrying out his duties as Senator while in detention. 51 Later in the campaign period, candidate Manny Villar was adopted under the Genuine Opposition’s (GO) banner, which will explain why in the following survey data in table 2, his name appears as a candidate of the GO. At the onset, candidate Antonio Trillanes also declared he was running as an independent, but was also immediately subsumed under the opposition coalition. The shifting of political labels throughout the campaign is not seen to affect the results of the study which is more concerned with acquiring indepth responses from the candidates and their campaign staff on the nature, perceptions and motivations of Filipino politicians’ use of the Internet, specifically, their campaign websites. In any case, candidates categorized either under the Genuine Opposition banner or as independent were all considered to be running against the administration party. Hence, these aspirants will be naturally overrepresented in the study sample. Table 3 shows a survey conducted by Pulse Asia, an independent polling firm in the Philippines, which served as a useful sampling frame that gives a perspective on how the subjects in the study sample fared in the survey rankings three weeks before the elections. The researcher included additional data, specifically in the last column, to show that more opposition candidates (represented by party GO and Ind) had websites than candidates from administration-backed Team Unity (TU) during the campaign season. This study concentrates solely on the official campaign websites of the six senatorial candidates selected and does not include their other online spaces or activities in the electoral Web sphere, which carries a dynamic array of Web materials such as blogs or social networking accounts (Schneider and Foot, 2006). 52 Table 6. Pulse Asia Survey: SENATORIAL VOTING PREFERENCES Party Voting For Rank LEGARDA, Loren B. ESCUDERO, Francis Joseph “Chiz” G. VILLAR, Manuel "Manny" Jr. B. LACSON, Panfilo “Ping” M. PANGILINAN, Francis “Kiko” N. CAYETANO, Alan Peter “Compañero” S. HONASAN, Gregorio "Gringo" B. AQUINO, Benigno Simeon III “Noynoy” C. RECTO, Ralph “Korecto” G. ANGARA, Edgardo “Ed” J. ARROYO, Joker P. ZUBIRI, Juan Miguel “Migz” F. PIMENTEL, Aquilino “Koko” L. SOTTO, Vicente "Tito" III C. ROCO, Sonia “Inang Guro” M. DEFENSOR, Michael "Tol" T. OSMEÑA, John Henry "Sonny" R. PICHAY, Prospero “Butch” Jr. A. MAGSAYSAY, Vicente “Vic” P. TRILLANES, Antonio "Magdalo" IV F. GO GO GO GO Ind GO Ind GO TU TU TU TU GO TU GO TU GO TU TU GO 59.6 47.2 47.0 43.9 38.8 38.2 35.7 35.5 35.4 35.2 33.4 32.0 30.1 29.2 27.1 25.6 25.1 24.0 22.8 22.0 Website 1 2-4 2-4 2-4 5-10 5-10 5-12 5-12 5-12 5-12 7-14 7-14 11-15 11-17 13-18 14-20 14-20 15-21 16-21 16-21 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes No Yes No Yes (Study sample in bold) Official campaign websites were defined as those sites not produced by any organization other than the one controlled by the candidate or his campaign or communications staff. Websites were also determined to be the official sites of the candidates via confirmation with the candidates themselves and their staff. The identification of the official campaign websites was conducted via commercial search engines such as Google using “candidate name + official website” and cross checking with entries in Wikipedia and with the candidates themselves. To address the transience of websites and to capture their appearance at the time of analysis, screen shots of the relevant sections of the websites were taken using the “alt print Scrn” function. The researcher then examined the first and second levels/pages linked from the front or opening page. Three waves of manual coding (March 11, 18 and 28, 53 2007) were conducted during the campaign for the five websites: www.mannyvillar.com.ph, www.edangara.com, www.trillanes.org.magdalo, www.chizescudero.com and www.kiko.com.ph while coding for the sixth website www.pipolsdragon.com.ph was conducted post-election. Early attempts to locate the website of candidate Joker Arroyo were unsuccessful via commercial search engines, but it was subsequently discovered in a Wikipedia entry about the candidate. Arroyo’s website was later included in the study in order to have two representatives from the administration coalition. This did not pose any problem since his website was still accessible at the time of second and third round of focus group interviews. Multiple waves were ruled out for all six websites because previous studies suggested that features hardly change at all during the campaign (Gibson et al., 2002). Data from the earlier coding was collated and finalized into one table (see appendix). A thorough examination of the websites was done via a content analysis of the sites, which will be discussed in detail in the following subsections. 3.2 Content Analysis Traditionally, the content and quality of candidate and even party websites have been scrutinized systematically, by assigning various features that correspond to certain basic functions that political actors perform during election periods (Gibson, 2004). Klotz (2005) noted that the development of Web campaigning as a genre with identifiable features facilitated content analysis. In her examination of Web campaigning from a global perspective, Gibson noted that variants of coding schemes have been applied to various national contexts, but the basic categories are the provision of information 54 about the candidate and the campaign, opportunities for interacting with voters, as well as possibilities for networking with other organizations. Schneider and Foot (2006) have grouped these functions into four basic practices – informing, connecting, involving and mobilizing. Indicators under the practice of informing would include candidate biographies, speeches and campaign news, while the practice of connecting is manifested by links to government sites, endorsements and party affiliation. The Web practice of involving is seen in features providing information for contacting and donating to the campaign, while the mobilizing function is indicated by the feature that allows the offline distribution of materials and the electronic download of campaign items. In summing up the procedure used in this study for analyzing the content of the campaign websites, it first involved a pre-selection of the study sample by the researcher herself. The next step was to generate a new coding protocol that became the guide for evaluating and analyzing the content of the website. This was the basis in checking for the presence or absence of certain features of the website that was later summarized. The researcher also included in the website criteria, two categories that she used to gauge the effectiveness of the website in marketing candidates. The researcher’s own analysis was supplemented by observations by focus group participants, whose views on the quality and user-friendliness of the website as well as the timeliness and relevance of the site’s content produced a more meaningful examination. The section below details the coding strategy that was used for this study. 55 Coding Strategy While the coding protocol used for this study was largely informed by earlier research on online campaign websites (Gibson and Ward 2005; Foot and Schneider, 2006; Cuevas, 2004; Carlson and Strandberg, 2005), the criteria for assessing the selected campaign websites was refined in this study as shown in table 4. For instance, the two closely-linked practices of involving and mobilizing voters will be subsumed under the category of participating, to avoid the overlapping of functions. The table likewise accommodates select criteria traditionally used to evaluate commercial websites, in order to determine whether effective marketing practices were employed by the respective campaigns, such as delivering and attracting (Berthon et al, 1998; Simeon, 1999). Table 4 below summarizes the description for the main categories and provides examples of these features. 3.2.1 Informing Foot and Schneider (2006) claim that informing is a familiar practice deeply embedded in the traditional mission of campaign organizations (Schneider and Foot, 2006), so it should come as no surprise that campaign websites should also be utilized primarily for this function. Under the information-provision dimension, all sites usually contain at least one type of biography, sections containing their positions on issues which came in the form of news or press releases, and their legislative agenda, whether it was a record of bills or laws passed or proposed measures to be filed once elected into office. Party affiliation, which pertains to a succinct, visible reference to the candidate’s party such as a logo, label or slogan (Schneider and Foot, 2006) has been included by the researcher to fall under the category of 56 informing, since this educates audiences on which party or coalition candidates are aligned with, or whether they are running independently. The researcher will check for the presence or absence of any of these features and likewise compare the six websites in terms of the quality, currency and relevance of the information presented on each site. Table 7. Criteria for Evaluation of Websites Categories Operational Definition Examples of Features 1. Informing * Sections or features that provide information about the candidate, his platform of service, his party affiliation, his stand on issues and news about the campaign * Candidate Biographies, Milestones, Issue Statements, Press Releases, Speeches, Text or Video Presentations, Party logo, Campaign Platform, Advertisements 2. Participating * Provides opportunities and tools for supporting, joining and communicating with the campaign and the candidate, as well as with site visitors * Contact Details, Forums, Tagboards, Guestbook, Campaign schedule, Offline Distribution of Campaign Materials, Poster and ringtone or jingle downloads * Allows users to link with other sites whether news, party or social networking sites * Links to Friendster and Multiply Accounts, RSS feeds government portals, news sites * Refers to the technical infrastructure required to provide information; also refers to navigability and fast loading * Refers to the site being directly known by the potential audience via media advertising and search engines; also refers to an attractive homepage that sustains interest of visitors * Search bar, toggle bars 3 3. Linking . 2 4. Delivering . 15. Attracting 3 3.2.2 Participating How voters get involved in a campaign can take a variety of forms. The most simple and common form is by providing particular types of information that facilitate voters’ abilities to contact the campaign (Schneider 57 and Foot, 2006). This information includes invitations to sign up or become a member of the campaign team, to subscribe to the campaign listserv or newsletter, and to donate to the campaign. Websites can also be tapped to mobilize visitors to download promotional resources such as poster and flyer designs for offline printing and distribution. The website can also serve to encourage visitors to post their comments, suggestions and questions via guestbooks and electronic forums, while online polls can provide a quick snapshot of the pulse of online visitors. Aside from checking for the presence or absence of these features, the quality of interaction in terms of whether the sites encourage a one-way or two-way interaction with site visitors will also be assessed. 3.2.3 Linking The practice of linking entails different types of hyperlinks, but this study is concerned with the practice of outlinking, which has to do with creating links to sites produced by other entities, such as political parties or government agencies that enable visitors to leave the original site (Foot and Schneider, 2006). In their extensive study on Web campaigning, Foot and Schneider outlined the different functions for outlinking, such as offering site visitors more extensive information about the candidate. If the original site links to another site produced by the candidate or campaign, this was seen to improve the candidate’s credibility. Outlinking can also serve to help meet the campaign’s goals if the site links to voter registration sites or other electionrelated sites. However, it can also prove risky to link to an information source on another site, as campaigns have no control over the information posted on that site. All in all, a candidate website that provides this linking function 58 demonstrates technical expertise, while its absence conveys both a lack of depth in their information structure and Web fluency (Foot and Schneider, 2006). For this function, the researcher will examine the types of sites that campaign websites connect to, should this feature be present in their websites. 3.2.4 Delivering Borrowing from website assessment models of commercial sites, the campaign websites will also be assessed in the function of delivering the message or information on the sites. This is related to the technical infrastructure which is required to provide easy navigability within the site (Simeon, 1999). This function will also be assessed in terms of the interactivity of the site itself, which will rely on the focus group participants’ actual experience in navigating the website. 3.2.5 Attracting In addition, this study will evaluate the website’s function of attracting, otherwise referred to as locating, to determine the ease or difficulty of locating these sites via media advertising, popular search engines or whether the site is directly known by the potential audience (Schubert, 2003; Simeon, 1999). 3.3 Interviews with Candidates and Campaign Managers In-depth interviews were employed by the researcher in order to address the second research question on candidates’ views and motivations regarding online campaigning. During the campaign period, interviews were scheduled with six respondents who were the candidates themselves or their representatives who were knowledgeable about the six websites selected for the study. Interviews were conducted with only five out of the six respondents. The difficulty in acquiring information from all the candidates and sometimes the professionals 59 they hired to create their sites posed as one of the limitations of this study. While the researcher relied on her professional working relationship with the candidates in the past for easy access to information, getting in touch with the public relations consultants whom they hired to come up with the campaign strategy including the website, proved to be a challenge. This was true in the case of Senator Joker Arroyo’s PR consultants and Web designer who declined to be interviewed for the study. Interviews are one of the most widely used and most fundamental research techniques since they enable researchers to obtain information that cannot be gained from observation alone (Berger, 2000). Semi-structured, faceto-face interviews were used by the researcher to acquire more in-depth data about their websites, where respondents were asked open-ended questions specifically about the reasons and goals for conducting online campaigns. The subjects were also asked about other factors that led them to create their websites, how they used them during the campaign, and whether they found Web campaigning useful to their overall campaign strategy. With the permission of the interviewees, all the interviews were video-taped and audio was also recorded as a back-up measure. All the interviews were later transcribed, with the researcher translating into English, relevant quotes in Tagalog which were used in the findings and analysis chapters. Follow-up interviews were done via e-mail to clarify some issues or points raised in the initial interview. Relevant quotes from the interviews were merged with the results from the website analysis in order to help explain the absence or presence of a feature, or why their websites were utilized in a particular manner. 60 3.4 Focus Group Discussions Social scientists have borrowed the use of focus groups from marketing research, as it continues to be the dominant form of qualitative data collection (Morgan, 1997). While there are inherent difficulties in this method of research, such as logistical concerns and efficiency in moderating group discussions, Morgan underscores its strengths, which allow for more in-depth data that is directly targeted to the researcher’s interest. In election-related studies, this method has been employed to examine how citizens perceive the Internet as a political tool (Stromer-Galley and Foot, 2006; Park and Choi, 2001; Foot and Schneider, 2006). Focus group discussions were utilized for this study since the topic was considered to spark a lively debate among the participants. A total of six focus group sessions were conducted with Filipinos ages 18 to 40 years in order to understand the perception of Filipinos, based in the Philippines and overseas, on the efforts of local politicians who used the Internet to campaign for the midterm elections. Overseas Filipinos were included in the study sample since they accounted for the biggest number of ‘hits’ in electionrelated websites (PJR Reports, 2007). The respondents came from different social backgrounds with varying levels of educational attainment. The researcher employed a convenience and purposive sample from her network of colleagues and friends, regardless of their level of expertise in using the Internet and political engagement. This was done in order to elicit a wide range of opinions and views on Web campaigning, from the politically-savvy, to the politically apathetic, and from non technologically-savvy users, who also can bring interesting perspectives to the table, compared to the more regular online users. Selection of the participants was also based on what the candidates and 61 their staff identified as their target audiences for their campaign websites, namely, the youth, ‘yuppies’ or young professionals, as well as overseas Filipinos. Two pilot interviews were held in Manila shortly after the May 2007 polls -- one with tertiary-level students from public and private institutions, and the second with media practitioners, the results of which were also included in the analysis. Another round of group interviews was separately conducted a year after the elections with Manila-based professionals working in government, and with professionals working in the private sector. Two sets of interviews were also conducted in Singapore with a group of overseas Filipino professionals from different fields, and with a group of undergraduate and post-graduate students studying in the National University of Singapore. Information about the demographics of the focus group participants is as follows: Demographical Information The demographics of this non-randomly selected sample are as follows: • A total of 33 interviewees participated in five focus group discussions that were composed of a) Manila-based university students, b) Manila-based professionals from the local media, c) Manila-based professionals from a private company, d) Manila-based government employees, e) Singapore-based Filipino undergraduate and graduate students, and f) Singaporebased Filipino professionals • Of this number, 16 were females while 17 were males. • 13 respondents were between the ages of 25 and 30, followed by 8 respondents who were below 20 years old (ranging from 18 to 19 yrs of age); then by 6 participants aged 20 to 25 years 62 of age; and another 6 participants who were between the ages of 30 to 40 years old. ( In the discussion and analysis of the findings, younger participants will refer to the respondents with ages ranging from 18 to 29 years old, while participants aged 30 to 40 will fall under the category of ‘older’). • Except for the 8 undergraduate students, all of the respondents had a college degree, with 8 participants currently taking and having completed their post graduate degrees; 17 of the respondents were professionals from the government and private sector. • Majority of the respondents came from middle-income households whose average annual income ranges from P 246,109 to P 2,000,072 pesos (roughly $41,000,000 U.S.) according to the 2006 National Statistics Office Survey on Family Income and Expenditure • A little over half of the respondents were registered to vote, with candidate identification heavily skewed towards those from the political opposition. The interviews sought to examine the perception and attitudes of the target audience towards the use of candidate websites as a campaign tool. Each group consisted of an average of six participants who were provided a laptop and asked to navigate a candidate website for a maximum of five to ten minutes. The participants were then asked about their observations using a semi-structured interview guide (refer to appendix). 63 This was the procedure used for the first two focus groups. While the same process was followed by the remaining groups, an additional step was introduced to later focus groups which required participants to first look at screen shots of the websites taken during the campaign period before proceeding to navigate the same websites in their current state. Although the other half of the focus groups were interviewed a year after the elections, all of the websites were still active, although with some changes at the time of the group interview. The screenshots thus allowed the participants to view the main homepage of each website during the campaign period. The discussions were audio and video-taped and lasted about an hour and a half for each session. 3.5 Examining Popular Trends in Campaign Websites A comparison will be made between the six websites and two U.S. campaign websites in terms of the presence of website features. The selection of the two foreign websites, namely the sites of Democratic nominee candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, were made based on the identification by the candidates interviewed. The evaluation of the six selected websites, coupled with the results of the individual interviews, yielded interesting information as to the unique adoption by Filipino candidates of the campaign website, backdropped against the vibrant political culture and system they operate in. These findings will be analysed within various conceptual and analytical frameworks in the following chapter. 64 Chapter Four FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 4. Candidates and their Websites This chapter seeks to answer RQ 1: “How did the candidates use their websites to promote themselves to the electorate? ” and RQ 2 “What were the candidates’ motivations in using the Internet for political campaigning ?”. It will detail the findings from the evaluation of the websites, which will be interspersed with relevant quotes from the interviews with the candidates or campaign staff, as well as key quotes from participants in the focus group discussions. While user perceptions will be analysed separately in the next chapter, the researcher selected relevant input from the focus group discussions in order to arrive at a more multi-faceted analysis of the campaign websites in terms of their multimedia capacity, navigability, and relevance to users. In addressing the first two research questions, the chapter will be sub-divided into 1) evaluation of websites and 2) candidates’ perception of online campaigns. 4.1 Website Evaluation The study shows that the function of informing was the most prominent feature in candidate sites, closely followed by participating and the function of linking but at varying degrees (Table 8). The evaluation of the six websites also revealed that in terms of delivering, the websites were found to be relatively satisfactory, while the websites did not attract the attention of the audience. The last two categories, namely delivering and attracting, were not coded since these two functions were intangibles, and were instead analysed based on the responses of the focus group participants in a separate subsection. 65 Table 8. Contents of Campaign Websites by Candidate Function Indicators Escudero Trillanes Pangilinan Angara Villar Arroyo Informing Biography/Milestones/CV X X X O X X O O X X X X X X O O O O X X X O X X X O X X X O X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X O X O X X O X X O O X X X X O O X X O X X O O O 10 O O X O O X O O O X O X O X O O O O O O O X O O Issue Positions Campaign News Speech Texts Legislative Agenda Programs and Projects Party Affiliation Newsletter Photos of Campaign Events Campaign Ads Online Events (Podcast) RSS Feeds Blog 13 Participating 9 Volunteer Sign-up Become a member E-mail list Sign-up Donation Information SMS/Mobile Phone Contact Information Visitor Comments E-forum/Tagboard Offline Distribution of Materials Online Polls X X O O O X X X X Linking X X O O O X X O X X 10 7 Send Links Link to other sites 2 TOTAL = 25 X X O O X X X O X X 7 O X 9 O O X O O X X O O O 6 O X 11 x 6 X X 4 O X 9 2 O O 1 O O 1 1 2 1 0 0 17 14 17 16 12 10 Origin: X = feature present on site O = feature absent on site 4.1.1 Informing Under the category of informing, it would appear that candidates placed great importance on this function in order to promote their candidacies, more than any other practice. All of the websites evaluated contained more than half of the total number of features. The priority given to advancing the candidate through his political and personal background, including career 66 achievements, and his stand on current issues was reaffirmed by the candidates themselves and their representatives: ‘Our main goal was really information dissemination more than anything.’ -Exec. Asst. for Sen. Angara ‘As a medium, to make known our campaign because that was our downside because to begin with my name has never been associated with the title senator. So the more avenues we used to make known that fact , that I was running for the senate, the better for us.’ -Sen. Francis ‘Chiz’ Escudero ‘It’s also part of information dissemination. People can only be interested as they are informed. To be involved, you have to be informed. That’s among the factors why we are continuing to use this medium, the Internet, to really connect with our voters. You’re only as effective as the message you are able to convey.’ - Sen. Francis ‘Kiko’ Pangilinan ‘Our office (Office of the Senate President) decided to utilize the Web because of its many advantages, primarily in disseminating information about the performance of SP Villar. Its wider and faster reach is very useful especially in the field where we are working, where significant events affecting the country could happen anytime.’ -Spokesperson for Sen. Villar The following subsections will provide more basis and examples to lend support to the claim that candidates are using websites mainly to promote their candidacies. 4.1.1.1 Personal and Career Background Information containing the candidate’s personal and career background was presented in varied formats, with most websites using traditional 67 biographic text formats. A few made the effort to accompany their text versions with a multimedia display (Figure 2). Figure 2. Screenshot of Milestone page in Villar’s site ↑ Lower portion shows moving images of the historical timeline of Villar’s business and political career Other websites such as Arroyo’s, condensed his political career data in bullet format (Figure 3). In general, all the websites seized the chance to present a comprehensive and updated list of the career backgrounds and accomplishments of the candidates in their respective websites. Figure 3. Screenshot of Biography section in Arroyo’s site 68 From the viewpoint of site users, traditional formats did not sit well with younger participants in the focus group discussions, who emphasized that this somehow treated them as prospective employers. In terms of the relevance of the information presented, it would seem that users did not find much of the data relevant in one particular site: N: It’s a regular curriculum vitae, a biography. What are we, his employer? When you read the full biography, when you click on it and enter, it’s the same thing, it should be more expository, his narrative. (Focus Group # 3) Some respondents meantime reacted positively to sites which used dynamic presentations and bullet-form layouts of the candidate’s career and performance highlights, such Villar’s and Arroyo’s. Another participant stressed that he considered it essential to know the background of the candidate he was going to consider in the elections, while another said this section in the website served to change her earlier impression of the candidate: M: I would probably just read the biography section, to know where he finished school. Education is very important for me, where he came from, if he took up masters studies, if he’s smart, knowledgeable about many things. (Focus Group # 5) H: I thought before he was all about business and entrepreneurship. I felt that he gets kickbacks and that this benefits his businesses. But I was impressed when I learned about his background. (Focus Group # 5) As a whole, these findings indicate that all the participants in the focus group discussion were generally interested to read about a candidate’s educational background and record of accomplishments or performance. This could perhaps reflect the notion that Filipinos are an ‘increasingly politicized people’ (Valdehuesa, 2005). Regardless of the participants’ social status and 69 educational attainment, everyone was curious to learn about the candidates being promoted on the websites, echoing at least partially, the findings of one study on the ‘vote of the poor’. This study found that Filipinos ranked a candidate’s high educational achievement as the most important attribute, followed by his or her leadership experience and platform of government (IPC, 2005). In quoting Lynch, Abueva (1969) claimed that politicians are expected to act as patrons in rural areas ‘to make substantial contributions toward community projects and provide leadership in community activities; to give advice to their less secure neighbors and assist them in their dealings with government officials’. In the same manner, the findings from the website evaluation suggest that the candidates seem to recognize what the electorate demands from them. Thus, their websites highlight that they have the job experience and the educational capacity to handle the position they are seeking. 4.1.1.2 Legislative Agenda All the candidates in the study sample, being incumbent elected officials immediately before the elections, provided a record of bills passed, resolutions filed, and laws that were passed during their term, but this information appeared in the website as they did in the official journal of Congress (Figure 4). While respondents were unanimous in anticipating some record of the candidate’s achievements in the past and his proposed legislation that he wants to enact once elected into office, they had mixed reactions about how detailed the information should be. Some respondents preferred to see bite-size 70 information in the website, since most would just surf the site and not bother with reading the fine print. Younger respondents from between ages 18 to 29 emphasized that it wasn’t enough to enumerate the proposed bills or laws passed, which they found hard to understand, but pointed out the need to briefly explain in laymen’s terms what those measures intended to accomplish. According to them, this was necessary in order for the information to become relevant to the online audience. One participant proposed a solution that would give site visitors an option to ‘read more’ if they were interested to do so, rather than present the information in lengthy detail on the main page. Otherwise, a majority of the respondents said they would not bother at all with reading any text-heavy material: C: The legislative record, I was very disappointed with this, although the other parts of the website were great. And to think, the legislative record is quite important. J: It’s just the title of the bill, no explanation. (Focus Group # 3) Figure 4. Screen shot of Legislative section in Escudero’s website → Section of Escudero’s website enumerating all of the local bills he filed and passed, as well as national laws he co-authored during his term as Congressman 71 This finding reinforces the earlier suggestion made that Filipinos are highly-involved in political issues and expect their leaders to exhibit a record of accomplishment to show that they are indeed qualified for the post. This is despite the fact that in most cases, the legislative agenda featured on campaign websites does not identify whether the candidates were the principal authors or were co-authors, in a bid to prop up their image as a hard-working solon. Similarly, a record of past legislative work also serves to reaffirm that they, as good leaders should be, put to good use taxpayers’ money in passing vital legislation to benefit their constituents. This can be better understood through ‘old notions of paternalism and personalistic rule,’ whereby leaders are expected to look after the whole well-being of their followers (IPC, 2005). The presentation of a lengthy legislative record that is framed in legal terms goes against one principle in brand positioning: information about political leaders should be packaged in a ‘concise and easily digestible manner’ (Newman, 2006). 4.1.1.3 Issue Positions Issue positions, which can come in the form of press or news releases containing candidates’ stand on current topics of the day, were also a common feature among the six websites under study. However, only half of the websites updated their sections displaying press statements during the campaign period. This showed that some information was not always relevant and timely. Trillanes’ was one of these sites that did not regularly update this section. Nevertheless, Attorney Robles, spokesperson for detained candidate, pointed to the nature of the Internet that allowed them an additional medium for voicing out their opinions: 72 ‘…There’s no central authority who can actually censor the content, right? So even interviews, subsequently, when we were allowed media access, and we were able to get footages of the senator being interviewed, we uploaded this also on YouTube and nobody could censor, and it’s always available.’ The website was served as a forum for candidates’ agenda-setting, which they could not afford to do on traditional mass media with its limited airtime and number of pages: ‘The Web being so accessible, allows us to post updates and data easily, wherever we are. Daily press releases, news items and events are posted almost everyday.’ -Spokesperson for Sen. Villar The majority of the younger participants between ages 18 to 29 years old who were interviewed for this study, however, were quite vocal in expressing their opinion that the websites functioned to boost the candidates’ image: A: The site is propaganda for the candidate. That’s why you would really find information about the things he has accomplished. (Focus Group # 1) H: As usual, from what I saw in the website content, it’s all about stuff that would make the candidate look good. That’s what I observed. Of course, it’s their website, that’s why they would show information that the politician has accomplished a lot. (Focus Group # 5). Figure 5. Screenshot of Angara’s news section 73 Another young focus group participant expressed her preference for reading the news from other sources outside of the website. Out of the study sample of six websites, only Escudero and Trillanes’ sites employed RSS feeds (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) that provide Web content or its summaries, together with links to the full versions that facilitate site visitors to track updates on the site (Hooghe and Vissers, 2008): C: The other websites only showed what they wanted to show to site visitors, but this site has RSS feeds that gives news updates about the candidate from Inquirer, Manila Bulletin. There’s a secondary source that reports about the candidate, so it doesn’t come across as biased to me. (Focus Group # 3). These results can be understood in terms of the ‘news-making’ that takes place when public relations managers succeed in inserting suitable material into the channels of communication (Habermas, 1991). This can also apply to the Internet, which candidates and image-consultants alike recognize is the medium of choice of the youth. Moreover, it is in cyberspace where public relations experts, media consultants or ‘spin doctors’ now have unbridled opportunities to frame issues, due to the nature of the technology, which provides candidates a high-return, low-cost means of dispensing information directly to the public (Trent and Friedenberg, 2000). Candidates and their communication staff who cleverly provided links to outside news sources and employed RSS feeds perhaps understood the marketing principle that they can only be relevant if they respond to issues with immediacy, as the news is breaking (Newsman, 2006). 4.1.1.4 Campaign Information Apart from news releases that contain candidates’ positions on issues, the majority of the websites also featured news about the campaign, including 74 photos, campaign jingles and television advertisements which visitors could download. These sites were found to belong to candidates who already had these existing campaign materials which they merely transported to the Internet, including their campaign websites. However, by exporting offline content such as campaign jingles and television ads to the websites, a few participants felt uncomfortable with seeing ‘old tricks’ in the new medium: N: Oh my God, Villar is dancing. J: It’s alright to see him dancing, like with a celebrity in real life, or when he’s waving, that’s fine. But in the website, if you’re going to use the Internet as a medium, you should know how to package yourself. (Focus Group # 3). Most participants had the notion that the online audience is educated, and belongs to the middle-class, hence, the message should cater to them, instead of using images on the websites that appeal more to a lower-class segment of society. These results reiterate earlier claims that candidates are using any and all venues, most recently the Internet, to promote their candidacies. Since the lifting of the ban on political advertising with the passage of the Fair Election Act of 2001, candidates and parties can use print and broadcast advertisements, in addition to the usual printed election propaganda materials, such as pamphlets, stickers and posters. Without any law covering online campaigns to date, candidates are free to advertise on their websites, where existing television commercials are most often recycled. The move is understandable, considering the huge costs in the production of television advertisements. On the other hand, the growth of Internet cafes is providing affordable Internet access to the digital have-nots in the country’s urban areas (Khan, 2006), expanding the so-called customer base of the Internet. Thus, 75 candidates who try to be all things to all people run the risk of reducing their image as a strong leader, because they are seen to appeal to everyone’s whims (Newman, 2006). 4.1.1.5 Party Affiliation Half of the content sample contained information regarding party affiliation, through party logos or labels. While those websites did not contain any other information about the ideals or the principles that the party stood for, or the major coalition the candidate or his party was aligned with, clicking on the logo opened a new window to another website that provided details about the political party. This finding reflects the situation in the country wherein political parties are weak. Teehankee (2006) explains that political parties in the Philippines are loose coalitions of personalities and political clans that are organized around clientelistic machines that strive to gain power, and that have failed in offering a programmatic basis for selecting their candidates and gaining voters’ appeal. Thus you can find a situation where infighting and party-switching is a trend before elections, with some candidates eventually running as independents. Arguably, the transient nature of the Internet and the ease of updating information on the websites resonates with the volatile state of politics in the country. In place of strong independent political parties, small parties have merged to form coalitions instead. One such coalition is Lakas NUCD-UMDP, which was a conglomeration of parties built by then General Fidel V. Ramos in his bid for the presidency in 1992. The 1998 presidential elections later saw the emergence of the opposition’s Laban ng Makabayang Masang Pilipino or LAMMP (Struggle for the Nationalist 76 Filipino Masses) that backed the candidacy of then Vice President Joseph Estrada. Political coalitions found new names in the 2007 elections - the Genuine Opposition, which consisted of independent candidates, parties and further factions of political parties running against the administration, and Team Unity to represent the pro-administration parties and party wings such as the Liberal Party. That only a few of the respondents expected to read information in the website about the candidate’s party affiliation reflects the result of a survey showing that most Filipinos are dissatisfied with political parties in the Philippines (Lee-Brago, 2007). According to the Social Weather Station or SWS survey, since the respondents found that no party promoted the welfare of Filipinos, this suggests that parties have not sufficiently informed, inspired or persuaded the citizenry about their political visions, policies and platforms. 4.1.2 Participating The younger breed of candidates gave more opportunities for site visitors to get involved in supporting their candidacies compared to the more senior candidates in the study. On the other hand, veteran politicians deliberately limited their use of websites to engage site visitors. The following subsections will provide evidence for these claims using quotes from the candidates and focus group participants, to be followed by a discussion with respect to the specific ways that particular candidates via their websites are harnessing the potential for engaging visitors in the campaign. 4.1.2.1 Political Talk Five out of six candidate sites displayed the contact information of the campaign office, while only four websites allowed visitor comments on their 77 sites. The websites of Trillanes (Figure 6) and Escudero encouraged an open exchange among site visitors, while Angara’s site (Figure 7) gave a gentle reminder for visitors to mind the messages that they post. In reading some of the negative comments about him in his own website, Escudero admitted feeling annoyed but simply ignored them in the end. Figure 6. Screenshot of participative sections of Trillanes’ website Figure 7. Screenshot of guest book section in Angara’s site 78 The other kind of message that found its way into site guestbooks or campaign email addresses were requests for financial or other types of assistance. The flood of requests for assistance in his campaign websites led the office of Senator Pangilinan to create a new unit just to a respond to these concerns: ‘Yes, some ask for jobs, for recommendations. Some raise valid concerns about government. So it’s a variety of concerns. That’s why we put up a separate unit in the office precisely to address this, and all other Web-related communication and correspondence.’ - Sen. Kiko Pangilinan Escudero’s site made good use of this interactive function, so his office could be informed about both the positive and negative feedback on his campaign. In particular, it also benefitted Escudero in adjusting and crafting his campaign: ‘For example, in one of our ads, we asked for ideas on what to do. We aired our question and we got some responses. There were bad, and there were good ideas. It helped us a lot, in many ways.’ - Sen. Chiz Escudero The majority of the candidates did not participate in these exchanges, nor did they directly speak to site visitors. While few candidates such as Escudero and Pangilinan took the effort to read through and reply to some questions and suggestions on their sites, although somewhat belatedly, most focus group participants were of the opinion that the sites were being maintained by a staff or committee, and that the candidates themselves would not be the ones responding to the messages posted on the site. They did point out that it would be better if the candidates could answer queries or 79 suggestions published on the website. One focus group participant based in Singapore spoke on his preference, in particular, for seeing and hearing the candidates themselves addressing or speaking to site visitors from the website. This comment led another respondent in the same group to recall Hillary Clinton’s site, which he had visited during the U.S. primaries: J: I prefer to see a video link of the candidate himself speaking. It has an effect where it’s as if he’s speaking directly to me. I directly receive the message. It would be nice if there was a video. A: I would also like to raise that point. I fell hard for Hillary (Clinton), because she had a powerful video that was easy to download. Then there was her choice of words, I really fell for it. I suppose this is what the youth are looking for, basic elements of eye contact, of communicating. She simply said, ‘let’s talk’. I don’t know if anyone (in the Philippines) has done that in their websites. (Focus Group # 3). At first glance, the presence of this window of communication, including blogs which were present in only three candidate sites, could suggest that campaign websites, offered hope for a deliberative exchange to flourish. Some scholars argue that political blogs in particular, are reminiscent of Habermas’ ideal of a public sphere where people from all walks of life share in a discourse (Trammell et. al, 2006). In their study of the 2004 presidential elections in the U.S., they claimed that there was an increase in interactivity in candidate websites via blogs, via the greater frequency of hyperlinks and feedback features. However, a closer inspection of the messages posted by site visitors on website guest books in particular, revealed that the tone is usually in support of the candidate being promoted in the website, with a few unfavorable remarks towards the candidates’ opponents. This phenomenon can be 80 explained by some findings in the literature which claim that citizens are expected to seek information that is in line with their political interests, beliefs and orientation, and to avoid information that opposes and challenges their views (Norris, 2001). Furthermore, the Web tends to attract the middle class, urban, well-educated population, and in particular, the politically-active and engaged (Norris, 2003). Other scholars focusing on the profile of website visitors have found evidence that sites are preaching to the converted, where a majority of website visitors are candidate supporters, followed by undecided voters (Hong and Chang, 2002; Hooghe and Vissers, 2008). However, perhaps it is the presence of these undecided voters, and possibly of supporters of other candidates who could post unfavorable remarks on discussion forums, that drives some campaigns to limit this participative function in their sites. This phenomenon can be best understood by what Stromer-Galley (2000) claims, that it is mainly the fear of losing control of the discussion that explains why some campaigns avoid having this feature. As for the appeals for assistance that appear on these discussion boards, this is again indicative of the system of patronage that characterizes local politics, where voters were inclined to vote for particular candidates ‘who provided them that new deep well, that long-needed paved road or the urgent cash donation close to election time’ (Hofilena, 2006). 4.1.2.2 Voter Mobilization Half of the content sample contained features inviting supporters to volunteer or become a member of the campaign. In particular, this half belongs to Pangilinan, a re-electionist senator, and first-time senatorial candidates Escudero, a former Congressman, and Trillanes, a detained military 81 officer. The websites of Villar and Angara, on the other hand, were the only two websites that encouraged visitors to sign up in their respective campaigns’ e-mail list. Angara’s office explained why they deliberately did not make use of their websites to recruit volunteers for their campaign: ‘Sen. Angara has been in politics for a long time, so we didn’t have any problem mobilizing people. Our network is already wide. We already have contacts who know what to do during the campaign. It’s automatic for them to mobilize. It’s (website) not for mobilizing people. It’s really just for information.’ -Francine Sayoc, Exec. Asst. for Senator Angara In terms of providing contact information whereby visitors could ask about participating in the campaign in different capacities, a majority or five out of six websites displayed this feature. Only one candidate website, namely, Pangilinan’s (Figure 8) contained a feature inviting users to text the campaign using the sms platform, in order to get news and information during the campaign period. Figure 8. Close-up of Section with SMS feature in Pangilinan’s site ↑ Feature inviting site visitors to sms the campaign for news and information 82 Figure 9 . Close up of section mobilizing voters in Escudero’s site Another form of visitor participation was present in four out of six websites studied. The sites of Escudero, Trillanes, Pangilinan and Arroyo displayed a function whereby promotional material such as logos or posters could be downloaded for printing and subsequent distribution offline. The first finding about younger candidates mobilizing voters through their websites implies that the length of time in public service and experience in public office predicts whether a certain function or feature was adopted. Considering that Pangilinan, Trillanes and Escudero were up against three political heavy-weights who had served longer in government, they seized the opportunity afforded by the technology in recruiting supporters to their campaigns. A brief background on the political careers of Villar, Arroyo and Angara explains why they have a built-in advantage in terms of popularity and support. Villar was already an established entrepreneur before rising to fame as Speaker of the Lower House that impeached former president Joseph Estrada. Arroyo entered the political limelight as a human rights lawyer who was incarcerated during the Marcos regime and who later served as Executive Secretary in the Aquino administration. During his last term in Congress, he played an active role in the Estrada impeachment drive in the Lower House, to 83 the Senate where he gained more distinction as a member of the House prosecution panel during Estrada’s impeachment trial. Angara meanwhile began his political career in 1971 as a member of the Constitutional Convention and became the longest-serving member of the Senate since the first EDSA people power revolution. Thus, the camps of Angara and Villar were simply content to ask visitors to sign up for e-mail alerts. While a majority of the websites did not promote the use of SMS in encouraging voters to join the campaign during the campaign period, texting voters may have been separately carried out by other teams or units within the campaign and for different purposes, given the immense popularity of this platform in the country. Delving into this discussion, however, is beyond the scope of this study. The practice of a majority of the campaigns to enable visitors to participate by downloading promotional items from the websites is considered a higher degree of participation that is particularly good for candidate promotion as well (Schneider and Foot, 2006). Promotion, from a marketing perspective, can be linked to the so-called positioning of a brand, or in this case a politician, which is seen to be an initially slow process ‘as voters become familiar with a face’ (Newman, 2006). Apart from using the websites to position their so-called brand, candidates also encouraged and enabled site visitors to assist in promoting their candidacies. 4.1.2.3 Donating to the Campaign Website features that provide instructions or the system for making offline or online contributions to campaigns were consistently absent throughout all the websites studied in this thesis. While some websites 84 contained a feature seeking to ‘support’ the campaign, the candidates and the campaign staff clarified that the label was not meant for monetary donations. Some interview respondents revealed that this feature is a complicated and sometimes dangerous process: ‘We thought about it but we got scared. Why? You lose control. The only way to do it is either eyeball or give an account, but having an account is dangerous because someone might just deposit money from a dirty account. Later on someone might make an issue of it, so we got scared of it. We thought about it because there were those who wanted to help and wanted to know where to send. It might become an issue, and especially if somebody wanted to trap you.’ - Sen. Francis Escudero Trillanes’ staff initially thought of raising funds through their website, but quickly had a change of heart. Attorney Robles, chief of staff of Sen. Trillanes, said that apart from the lack of technical infrastructure in the country that would allow for online donations, it was mainly the fear and susceptibility of being set up by suspicious financiers with a gambling background that made them reconsider raising funds via their website: ‘The senator was approached during the campaign by representatives of at least two persons of dubious background. They offered him funds, that they were willing to help, of course in exchange for something. -Atty. Rey Robles Chief of Staff for Sen. Trillanes This particular finding on candidates’ rejection of online fund-raising can be explained by the notion that political culture ‘defines and constrains political practice, that in turn constrains the deployment of the Internet into culturally specific uses and functions’ (Kluver and Banerjee, 2005). In the Philippines, ‘poison politics’ is a term constantly used by President Gloria M. 85 Arroyo herself to describe the prevailing political system, which is characterized by constant bickering and politicking. This is more evident during election season, when political camps launch negative campaigns against one another. Just as dossier-gathering is a legal norm in American politics, so is collecting dossiers in the Philippines, although unofficially (Hofilena, 2006). The manual ‘How to Win an Election’, warns that information obtained by opponents that could be used against a candidate will have nothing to do with his or her capacity as a leader, and could therefore be something very personal that could undermine voter confidence. Thus, reputations can easily be destroyed in an election campaign, where allegations of corruption are quite rampant in the Philippines. Funds raised from smuggling, drugs and gambling are issues that would cast a negative cloud on a campaign (Coronel, 2000), especially since former president Estrada was largely believed to have benefitted from illegal gambling operations in the country. 4.1.2.4 Online polls This feature, which enables site visitors to respond to a close-ended question by selecting from among options presented on a Web page, was found on only three websites in the sample. Topics were found to be relevant and timely, albeit somewhat self-serving to the candidates. For example, the questions asked site visitors whether they thought the candidate whose site they were visiting would win the election. Some participants in the focus group discussions questioned the credibility of the results of these polls, which tended to favor the candidates being promoted on the site. This concern may have basis, since visitors to campaign websites were found to be mostly 86 supporters of the candidate whose site they were visiting, followed by undecided voters and then opponents (Hong and Chang, 2002). These polls can also serve to put forth the agenda of the candidates (Newman, 2006), since the topics are selected by their campaign managers or PR consultants. Meantime, the practice of conducting online polls by half of the study sample is indicative of the practice of political marketing research in order to get the pulse of the voters on specific issues (Newman, 2006: 204). Figure 10. Close-up of online poll section in Angara’s site Figure 11. Close-up of online poll section in Trillanes’ site 4.1.3 Linking Three out of six campaign websites appeared to link to popular sites as a means of promoting their candidacies. In particular, the websites of the younger candidates linked to social networking and special interest sites, such 87 as Friendster, YouTube and Multiply, followed by news portals of media companies. Still a few sites contained links to government sites such as the official Senate website and local tourism portals (table 9). Having links to party sites was common only to two candidate websites, where visitors simply had to click on the party logo to be directed to the party website. Overall, four out of six websites enabled visitors to link to other portal sites, while features asking visitors to send the campaign website link to their friends was not practiced by any of the samples studied. All of the focus group participants were particularly fond of websites which provided links to the social networking sites, because according to them, it gave them a convenient way out of politically-heavy material. Some of the respondents were also curious to check out the Friendster and Multiply accounts of the candidates, because it offered some form of entertainment via the photos displayed on these sites. The popularity of social networking sites Table 9. Types of sites linked from candidate websites Candidate Type of Site Example/s 1. Angara government, organizational and party site News, civic/advocacy, social Network and special interest Philippine Senate website, SEAPAC, LDP website ABS-CBN, inq7.net, Team Chiz, Friendster, Wikipedia, YouTube Multiply, Friendster and YouTube 2. Escudero 3. Pangilinan Social network and special interest sites 4. Trillanes Government, news, civic/advocacy and social networking sites 5. Villar Party, government and civic/advocacy sites NIL 6. Arroyo Philippine Information Agency, ABS-CBN, inq7.net, Magdalo para sa Pagbabago, Friendster Nacionalista Party site, Philippine Senate, Gabriela NIL 88 among younger candidates and all of the focus group respondents is an indication of Filipinos’ fondness for online social networking (Kittelson, 2008). Linking to these sites worked to promote their candidacies or their brands to their target markets (Newsman, 2006). In particular, ‘customers’ from all these other sites can be drawn to the candidates’ campaign websites (Berthon et al., 1998). On the other hand, the low incidence of websites linking to political party portals is again an indication of the nature of political parties in the country, most of which are loosely organized during elections without a programmatic basis for selecting their candidates (Teehankee, 2006). 4.1.4 Delivering Candidates and their website producers utilized a limited number of multimedia elements in their sites in delivering the campaign message and information about the candidate. Except for Trillanes, who was detained before and during the campaign period and therefore had limited material from which to produce interactive elements in his site, the rest of the candidate sites showcased audio-video materials containing television advertisements, podcasts, campaign jingles and other electronic campaign paraphernalia, such as ringtones and posters that visitors could download. These features are considered operationalizations of the concept of site interactivity which scholars have attempted to define and classify in so many ways. StromerGalley (2000) suggests that site interactivity is related to the engagement of the medium itself, which allows visitors to perform commands or functions. The level of site interactivity across the majority of the websites is considered a slight improvement compared to the websites in the 2004 89 elections which provided only biographic information and were found lacking in multimedia capacity (Mirandilla, 2007). In this new study, it was found that while there were some moving icons that represented the milestones or career highlights of candidates, there was no audio-visual presentation of any candidate specifically created for the website to address its viewers. The use of live video streaming was also absent in the sites studied. Navigation was also found to be a bit problematic for a few sites whose layout contained two sets of toolbars on the upper portion of the page, as well as on one side of the home page. The focus group participants expressed varying preferences for the amount and level of interactivity in campaign websites. For instance, some respondents expected to see a high level of site interactivity while some were bothered with sites which displayed too many moving images: A: There’s something moving at the top page, also on one side. There’s too many things moving at the same time. It’s kinda bothering. G: It’s like he’s being interactive for the sake of being interactive. (Focus Group #1) A few participants were divided over Villar’s site, which had an unconventional layout in its homepage that was similar to a magazine cover (Figure 12). Others found it to be an innovation and therefore pleasing, while some who were used to more traditional site formats were not fond of it. Figure 12. Homepage of Villar’s site 90 A few participants were concerned about sites that contained dead links, blank spaces or pages that were slow to open, which could potentially result in visitors leaving the site. In one study that sought to improve website usability for online shopping, Lim (2002) argued that most online shoppers have become familiar with the sequential display of tangible information on websites, such that when websites fail to deliver in this aspect, visitors feel frustration and confusion and may possibly abandon the site. Dead links and empty spaces or pages in the website also made an impression on site visitors that the candidate and his staff were not very serious about their website presence since it was not regularly maintained, nor did they check, for example, if site photos were causing slow downloads. For the latter, participants also attributed slow downloads to the low bandwidth in the area where the interviews were being conducted. The minor improvements seen in the 2007 websites compared to the 2004 sites in terms of site interactivity can be attributed to a number of factors. First is that while multimedia elements such as the downloading of electronic campaign material, video and audio-streaming, have been around for some time, candidates, their PR staff and Web designers have only recently realized the utility of various Web tools to promote their candidacies. Secondly, campaign planners have recognized that the website can act as a multimedia information source with a comprehensive range of information that can be easily updated, can encourage ‘customer’ feedback and the construction of a supporter database, and can allow the targeting of specific groups by developing specialized page content to individual sites and narrowcasting of relevant material (Bowers-Brown, 2003). Likewise, multimedia elements can 91 also give ‘consumer control’ which allows users to manage their participation online at their convenience and likewise allows for interaction with the provider, which enables a ‘customer’ or ‘voter’-focused provision of service (Bowers-Brown, 2003: 104). The digital campaigns of other political players may have also influenced the adoption of multimedia elements in some sites. In particular, few candidates admitted to following news about the powerful Web campaigns being waged by democratic nominee candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, or the digital campaigns of their rivals in the local senate race. It may also very well be that the dominance of political advertising on traditional media formats such as television (Schultz, 2004) means that campaigns are not giving too much effort and attention to their campaign websites. Ultimately, the interactive offerings that are present in sites such as audio, video and electronic downloads give an appearance that candidates are up-to-date with the technology, even while these are limited in scope. Despite these slight improvements in terms of the dynamic presentation on websites, these efforts were found wanting by some focus group participants. It could be that factors such as social background, educational attainment, level of Internet skill, and the political maturity of the visitors played a role in how they view these offerings on campaign websites. The important thing to consider in creating campaign websites, is to have visitors ‘interact with the information and resources provided on the site’ (Berthon et al., 1998). 4.1.5 Attracting The results showed that candidates were not effectively attracting visitors to their websites. Overall, there was very low direct awareness of the 92 existence of the websites among the focus group participants. Half of the websites studied were aggressively promoted in the online environment, but not as much in offline advertisements such as television, radio and print materials. Angara was among the few candidates who invested heavily on Web advertisements, whose celebrity-endorsed commercial would pop up on the computer screen whenever a visitor opened a site (PJR Reports, 2007). A majority of the study sample were relatively easy to locate via popular search engines, with the exception of Arroyo’s site which could only be discovered if one was diligent enough to look up his profile in Wikipedia. The low awareness of the candidate websites among focus group participants is an indication that they perhaps needed to more aggressively publicize their websites both online and in mainstream media in order to reach a greater number of audiences. Few candidates have registered their names and their websites with Wikipedia and advertised in online media organizations but candidates could also tap popular search engines such as Google to make it easier for the public to locate their websites. The use of conventional media, on the other hand, such as corporate literature and press advertising to promote awareness of online activity and website addresses would also be a good practice, as it is in fact, among the criteria for effective Web-based marketing (Berthon et al., 1998). 4.2 Understanding Candidates’ Perceptions of online campaigns This second part of the chapter will present the findings and discussion from the interviews with the candidates and their campaign staff. This section complements the website evaluation and provides a more subjective and indepth picture of Filipino candidates’ motivations, goals and perceptions of 93 Web campaigning. This section addresses the second research question on the motivations and perceptions of Filipino candidates in engaging in digital campaigns. Three major themes emerged from the interview results pertaining to candidate motivations for website creation, the role and importance of websites in the overall campaign strategy, and the growing importance of websites in the campaign. These themes will be discussed in detail below. 4.2.1 Motivations for Going Online That online campaigns are a cheap and new way of campaigning to voters is a recurring motivation that was common across all candidates for establishing their official campaign websites. Trillanes, for one, was able to campaign to the electorate even from his detention cell, made possible by a group of friends in the military who dedicated and operated a website for the detained Navy officer. Trillanes, who also has a blog and Friendster account, had obvious reasons for using all available forms of media: “I have many supporters, we will launch a proxy campaign all over the country. We will maximize technology – TV, radio, print, text (SMS) and the Internet” (gmanews.tv 2007). Spokesperson for Trillanes, Attorney Rey Robles, said that the scarcity of funds necessitated their deployment of the Internet in their campaign. “Infact, there was probably no other means available to him. Because at that time he was detained, members of the media were not allowed to interview him, except prior to the last few weeks of the election.” According to Escudero, the fees required for registering or creating a website only takes up a negligible portion of the campaign budget, and can even be put up for free via host sites. Internet campaigns may be cheaper 94 compared to advertising on the mass media, but moneyed candidates are engaging in both, and not replacing one for the other. In a study by Nielsen Media Research Philippines, Villar spent a total of P117.64 million pesos in political advertisements, while Arroyo spent P104.35 million (PJR Reports, 2007). Trillanes’ cash-strapped campaign limited his exposure in the mass media, except for the news coverage of his trial. A majority of the interviewees also considered online campaigning as a new way of reaching out to the electorate. Politicians wanted to project an image before the online community that they too were part of the ‘in’ crowd that uses the Internet. This crowd comprised 16% of the total population in 2007, which was estimated at 87 million (Internet Usage Statistics, 2007). The majority of Internet users were found to be male (58%), between the ages of 20 and 29 (48%) and belonging to the upper-middle income bracket (31%) (http://www2.acnielsen.com/reports/). This ‘in-crowd’ is also growing, with the number of users expected to hit 24 million in the year 2008 (http://www2.acnielsen.com/reports/). Khan (2006) attributes this to the efforts of government and the private sector to close the digital divide with projects that aim to equip public schools with computers and Internet access, to educate teachers on how to use the technology, and to set up more Internet cafes in the country. A few interviewees stressed the importance of appealing to the online audience, though still a small portion of the entire population: ‘He wanted to tap a specific market or constituency that you don’t encounter in the traditional rallies and in market tours, although it is a smaller constituency. It’s a niche crowd, but it’s nonetheless important. A vote is a vote. It counts. -Francine Sayoc Exec. Asst. for Sen. Angara 95 Sen. Francis Pangilinan in the meantime was cognizant of the huge number of overseas Filipinos, and the importance of staying connected with events developing back home, having been based abroad at one time himself: ‘Primarily, we want to reach the Filipinos worldwide, and it has come to our attention that the Filipino websites, such as the Inquirer for example and other Filipino websites that are operating from the Philippines received many hits. And these are really coming from Filipinos overseas, and the fact that we have close to 10 million overseas Filipinos is obviously an indicator. It’s an indication that they’re out there.’ -Sen. Francis Pangilinan Notably, Pangilinan ranked first in the list of winning senatorial candidates, based on the votes cast by Filipino absentee voters from fifteen countries (http://www.gmanews.tv). Meanwhile, Escudero’s live, media-sponsored online chat with overseas Filipinos on the first day of the official campaign period showed how much his campaign valued the medium, as well as the audience it could reach. This campaign innovation earned Escudero exposure in the mass media: ‘It was the in thing to do. That’s why we advertised on inq.net, also because the site received a lot of hits, although it was targeting a specific market, meaning you’re targeting a,b, c, overseas and the youth.’ - Senator Francis Escudero The Philippine Journal Review (2007) reported that overseas Filipinos accounted for the biggest number of ‘hits’ in election-related websites, although it is unclear how substantial the number visiting candidate campaign websites was. The report adds that for the 2007 elections, election watchdogs 96 joined media entities and bloggers in providing developments and in-depth stories about the campaign and candidates. Some candidates and their staff were also aware that their political opponents were making their presence felt in cyberspace. Knowledge about the websites of American presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were also slightly influential in their decision to go online: ‘He was aware of what was happening in the States, and also, he was aware of what other candidates were doing. He referred to the websites of Kiko and Chiz, which get so much traffic, so he said we should already start our own.’ -Francine Sayoc Exec. Asst. for Sen. Angara Filipino candidates’ adoption of websites to promote their candidacies because they considered it cheap, new and the ‘in’ thing to do can be understood in terms of a few marketing principles. Advertising on the Internet is seen to provide high yields for such a minimal cost (Trent and Friedenberg, 2000). Creating websites therefore is not enough, according to Khan (2006), since it is rare for surfers to trawl the Web in search of a campaign website. The budgeting for Internet ads in popular news and election-related portals by some candidates is thus seen as a good marketing practice (Berthon et al., 1998). Considering that it was only in 1998 when the Internet was first used as a political tool in the country (Pabico, 2004), Web campaigning is still viewed as an innovation, and therefore, still ‘in’. Candidates recognize that they also need to appeal to the ‘in’ crowd in cyberspace. The online market may still be negligible, but it is who is online that can drive public opinion about candidates, such as technology experts, interest groups, bloggers and the online media (Newman, 2006). It comes as no surprise then, that the more 97 tech-savvy candidates have been reported to meet and interact with Filipino bloggers offline, in an attempt to build goodwill between the so-called opinion leaders in cyberspace and their campaigns (Francisco, 2008). What makes the practice popular in the Philippines can be seen as a consequence of globalization or the ‘Americanization’ of political campaigns (Schaferrer, 2006), whereby local candidates try to imitate the online efforts of their counterparts in the United States. It can also be understood within the context of a network society, where cyber campaigning can be said to be its cultural product (Castells, 1996). 4.2.2. Role of Websites in the Overall Campaign The interviews with the candidates revealed that campaigning via websites played a supplemental role in the overall campaign strategy. It forms part of a wide range of online activities and social networking that candidates engage in, such as distributing e-newsletters, e-mailing and blogging. In particular, the networks of Friendster, Political Friendster and Wikipedia were tapped by senatorial candidates to promote their photos, profiles and life stories to the online community, according to the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility. Politicians also used YouTube to disseminate their ads and engaged in media-sponsored real-time chats with the youth (Pinlac, 2007). To some, the campaign website served as the centerpiece in their online strategy, while others treated it as merely one of the have-to-do things in cyberspace. Online campaigns via official websites also served to complement offline campaigns that made use of traditional media such as television, radio and print. As Senator Francis Pangilinan puts it, “we left no stone unturned, 98 especially the channels that are free, which is the Internet. We utilized all kinds of medium, all platforms, so we could convey our message’. Campaigning via websites will have to play a supporting role in promoting candidates if one considers the popularity and credibility of traditional media as sources of information. Television remains the most credible source of news with a rating of 67% against radio’s 20% and newspaper’s 5% (Pulse Asia, 2004). Despite efforts by the government and the private sector to bridge the digital divide in the country, the low Internet penetration rate in the country is also observed to perpetuate this situation. 4.2.3. Growing Importance of Web Campaigns Regardless of how important a role their respective websites played in their online approach, most of the candidates saw the utility of putting up the website as a tool for promoting their candidacies. The websites studied for this thesis did not exhibit the ‘stop-start nature of campaign websites in other democracies which were built mostly for fund-raising purposes’ (Gibson, 2004). Results from the three waves of coding of the six websites indicated that candidates and their staff exerted some effort to provide comprehensive, up-to-date information using dynamic presentations that the technology offered. Some candidates also appeared to give audiences a space for communicating with the campaigns, and allotted funds to advertise their Web addresses. Compared with 1998, when the Internet was first documented to be utilized as a political tool (Pabico, 2004) through the 2004 presidential elections, when more candidates went online to woo voters via their campaign websites (Mirandilla, 2004; Cuevas, 2004), the 2007 midterm elections 99 witnessed increased political activity in cyberspace. A majority of the websites are still active as of the writing of this paper but have shifted gears as the election campaign has come to an end. Senator-elect Francis Escudero, stressed the value of allowing a feedback mechanism on his website, ‘because when you give a person anonymity, the opportunity is there for the person to say what’s on their minds, and it’s a valuable input if at all, whether it’s a lie, or a personal attack’. Pangilinan’s new-improved site also places weight on giving the electorate a chance to express themselves: “I believe that citizens themselves would like to participate in helping shape our nation, and their participation will be meaningful if they are informed and they are knowledgeable about issues.’ -Sen. Francis Pangilinan Angara’s site, now bereft of its celebrity-endorsed television advertisement, prominently displays a message thanking voters for their continued trust and support. Since Trillanes was elected into office, his site has undergone a complete facelift, giving off a more ‘senatoriable’ feel to the website. Thus it would seem that there is a growing importance attached to campaign websites, whereby during the campaign season, it served to promote the candidacies, it now functions as a feedback mechanism with the constituents in mind. It can also be surmised that the campaign website’s import could again find relevance in the future political plans of some candidates interviewed for this study. Of the six candidates studied, Villar has officially declared he will vie for the presidency in the 2010 elections, while Escudero and Pangilinan both consistently rank high in surveys about leaders 100 most preferred by Filipinos to succeed President Arroyo (http://www.pulseasia.com.ph). The importance of online electioneering via campaign websites is also underscored by the fact that the Filipino audience trusts all forms of advertising, according to 2007 AC Nielsen survey. The youth, on the other hand, are seen to look for alternative sources of information that the Internet increasingly provides. 4.3 Summary of Chapter Findings In summing up the site analysis findings, the most prominent of the three functional dimensions of campaign websites is informing, followed by participating and lastly, linking. Educating the public about the candidate and the campaign was seen to be of primary importance across all the senatorial websites studied. There was not much variation among the website scores for the category of informing, where the most common features were candidate biographies, political career highlights, legislative programs and stands on issues that were mostly presented in lengthy and dull formats. The information presented was also comprehensive, but not regularly updated. Marketing experts on the Web suggest that the information about candidates be concise and easily grasped by readers, and that campaigns respond to breaking news so that candidates can be relevant (Newman, 2006). In terms of fostering communicative exchange between people that was facilitated by the campaign website (Stromer-Galley, 2000), the more veteran politicos’ sites exhibited restraint, while the younger candidates’ sites invited more engagement from their visitors, in varying degrees. Three out of six websites which belong to senior politicians revealed that communication was mostly one-way, possibly owing to their desire to control or manage the information on their site. 101 While the other half encouraged some form of exchange among visitors and between visitors and the candidates or their staff, the responses to comments and queries however, was intermittent. There was notably a high degree of communication among the site visitors to the sites that offered a discussion space. In the meantime, it was observed that the campaign website served as another vehicle to perpetuate the patronage style of politics that typically characterizes local politics, with visitors posting their requests for all types of assistance from the candidates -- from solicitations to fund projects and social events, to invitations to attend and speak at social gatherings, funding for medical needs and even job applications. Research has indicated that it behooves candidates to incorporate interactive features in their sites, since this may “enhance users’ perceptions of candidates’ sensitivity, responsiveness, and trustworthiness” (Trammel et al, 2006). These features in the websites can also help political brands or the candidates, make an emotional and positive connection to audiences (Newman 2006). One other perspective that emerged in relation specifically to another aspect of the participating function was the issue of voter mobilization. Whereas half of the websites belonging to the younger breed of candidates utilized this function to the fullest, the older candidates on the other hand purposely rejected this feature in their sites. The prior existence of a wide network of supporters to include local leaders in various parts of the country that could be activated every election season was a legitimate reason for not tapping the technology for this purpose. It appears prudent for candidates to keep their campaign organization on stand-by until the next campaign, for according to campaign strategists, ‘a serious candidate will have to put together his/her team a year before the elections,’ and where ‘you have to get the best people early so that you get the best advice’ (Tiquia & Cariaga, 2001). Candidates’ 102 practice in integrating features that invited users to join a mailing list and allowed them to download campaign paraphernalia designs for subsequent offline printing is meanwhile seen by scholars to enhance the promotion of candidates and to establish brand positioning. In terms of donating to the campaign, one other information worthy of note is the common decision of all candidates to reject the use of their website to raise additional funds for their campaign. The culture of mud-slinging during the campaign season highly influences how candidates and their organizations operate in cyberspace, where rivals could still set up their opponents by depositing ‘dirty money’ from illegal sources into their campaign kitty and use this issue against them during the campaign. Another component of the category of participating is online polling which was present in only three out of the six websites studied. This is a marketing practice that can serve candidates well according to Newman (2006), as online polls can get the pulse of voters on specific issues as well as put forth the agenda of candidates since they select the topics to be asked about. Linking to external sites was a feature present in five out of the six websites, and is considered a good marketing practice as it draws ‘customers’ from other sites into the candidates’ campaign websites, and again aids in promoting their candidacies to target markets (Berthon et al., 1998; Newman, 2006). Providing links to social networking sites, is encouraged, as the Philippines ranked first in 2008 among countries whose Internet users belonged to a social network. Research has also shown that giving users an option about the kind of information to explore in and outside of the site not only makes online audiences feel empowered, but it can also potentially 103 increase the connections between voters and political candidates (Stromer-Galley, 2002). In evaluating the practice of delivery that could be understood in terms of site interactivity, most of the websites reflected some effort to provide a dynamic display via interesting timelines and audio-video formats. Scholars assert that making the site customer or voter-focused can encourage customer feedback, especially if the multimedia information source is comprehensive and regularly updated (BowersBrown, 2003). Three websites also featured the blogs of the candidates, which can serve as a tool for reputation management according to a 2008 Universal McCann survey. This particular survey which suggests the deployment of blogs in order to create ‘open and honest dialogue’ could serve candidates well, but only if they adhere to the rules of social media, where primarily, ‘honesty is the only policy’. Meanwhile, awareness of the campaign websites was very low across all of the focus group participants interviewed. This is one critical area where candidates and campaigns should improve on, since voters’ lack of knowledge about the existence of their websites will render candidates’ efforts useless. Publicizing campaign websites in both mainstream media and in cyberspace therefore, is a must, considering that there are also opinion leaders online, who can help promote a candidate. In general, the younger focus group respondents aged 29 years and below were slightly more discriminating than older respondents about the quality of the information displayed in the sites. They demanded that the sites should be worth their time and effort, should they choose to explore further its informative features. Most notable about the group interview findings was that most participants across all age 104 groups and social status gravitated towards the images or the so-called branding of the candidates on their websites. Apart from this, they were also interested in learning about the candidates’ platform of service, position on current issues, advocacies and legislative program. A majority of them also demanded timeliness of the information presented on the sites. The younger respondents pointed out that most of the topics in the sites did not appeal to them, but data on the candidates’ programs and projects for the youth such as scholarships piqued their interest. As a whole, politicians’ foray into cyberspace was motivated by the relative newness, cost-efficiency of the medium, its popularity and trendiness. Not only do more and more political actors venture into cyberspace, the online media, advocacies and election stakeholders are also online (Tiquia & Cariaga, 2001). The mainstream media’s coverage of candidates’ activities on the Internet is also an indication that online campaigning has become a trend, which no doubt will bring this phenomenon to the consciousness of the rest of the citizens. This growing phenomenon should therefore teach campaigns to take online campaigns more seriously, so that it can be a more effective tool in promoting candidates. This can be done by rationalizing and planning the website, its contents, its managers, and how it will fit into the overall campaign strategy (Bowers-Brown, 2003). Candidate websites will continue to play a supplemental role in the overall campaign strategy due to the continuing popularity of traditional media, coupled with the prevailing digital divide in the country. Lastly, the improving quality of campaign websites and their sustained operation points to the growing significance of this promotional device in electoral campaigns in the country. It is also the strong influence of U.S. politics, as well as Filipinos’ preoccupation with politics itself that is seen to establish Web campaigns as an essential tool for promoting candidates. 105 The following chapter will present the findings from the focus group interviews that were carried out in order to examine the perceptions and attitudes of the online audience towards Web campaigns. 106 Chapter Five FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 5. Understanding Audience Perceptions This chapter seeks to answer RQ3: “What were the audience perceptions of the candidates’ Internet campaigns?” and provides the remaining piece of the puzzle, that of the perception and attitudes of the Filipino online audience towards Web campaigns. The findings from this chapter complement the findings from the supply side – the candidates and their campaign staff, including the website evaluation, from a political and online marketing-driven approach. Several major issues were culled from the focus group interviews whose respondents were divided into two camps: younger participants, whose ages were from 18 to 29 years old, while the older participants refer to those aged 30 to 40 years old. Based on the discussions, participants were especially concerned about how the candidates were marketed in their respective websites. They also paid special attention to the quality of the information provided in these sites and how this was presented in terms of layout as well as navigability. The respondents also took issue with the language used in the website to deliver campaign messages. Interactivity was also a lively point of discussion among the respondents, stressing that this capability, both in terms of multimedia and in allowing communication with site visitors, is crucial in attracting and sustaining the interest of site visitors. 5.1 Political Branding The manner in which candidates were ‘branded’ or promoted in their respective websites was a major concern across all focus group participants. Respondents from the various focus groups articulated their diverse 107 preferences on how a candidate website should appear. The younger participants whose ages ranged from 18 to 29 years old, thought that candidate websites should appear cool and clever, primarily because the Internet to them is a cool medium. They also argued that the website should appeal to the online audience. Respondents were unanimous in saying they were inclined to favor sites that were not hard-sell in promoting candidates. This meant a new or unique way of packaging candidates such as Joker Arroyo in his website, which the older participants aged 30 to 40 years old liked, compared to some younger respondents who were too young to have appreciated and understood the context of his brand. His photo appeared with an artwork of a dragon in the background of the homepage, which was consistent with his offline branding as the people’s dragon in terms of his past record as a human rights lawyer since during the time of former Pres. Ferdinand Marcos (Figure 13): J: The way they packaged him, how they profiled the leader, it’s for the people who would be surfing the net, and what kind of people would that be? So to them it’s a breath of fresh air. M: Maybe they should come up more with something like this. T: That phrase, breath of fresh air, whether I believe it is something else, there’s a drawing factor in Joker’s that I did not see in Ed’s, because it was all facts and figures. In terms of impact, somehow there’s more appeal, there’s more messages and images that different people can respond to (Joker’s site). (Focus Group # 4) 108 Figure 13. Screenshot of Arroyo’s home page Figure 14. Downloadable logo from Arroyo’s site Figure 14 (above) is Arroyo’s campaign logo, which was also prominent in the website. This logo depicting the candidate in an anime-style caricature was previously used offline in television and print advertisements and was also used as a campaign sticker in the first senatorial election in which Arroyo ran and eventually won. Unlike products, which have clear labels on their packaging, political parties or candidates in this case, must rely on their platform and personalities to distinguish their brands in the minds of citizens (Newman, 2006). The presence of campaign slogans and taglines in candidate websites was considered by some younger respondents to be a clever branding technique that helped to identify candidates and make them more familiar with site visitors. This reflects one characteristic of a welldesigned website, where the home page identifies the candidate, utilizes the 109 candidate logo, and offers a clear indication of what the candidate is about (Trent and Friedenberg, 2000). Some respondents in the meantime expected a certain level of professionalism in candidate websites befitting a senatorial candidate (Figure 15), such as Edgardo Angara’s site, which was described as simple and straightforward: J: This is what I expect from a professional politician, I think. In the sense that I’m seeing issues and not personalities, really. The website talks about agriculture and education, which I think has always been part of his platform. (FGD # 3) Figure 15. Screenshot of Angara’s homepage However, what some participants viewed as simple and likeable about the image and branding in the site, were seen by others as stereo-typical or traditional politics which had now found its way into the new medium: N: Just one look at the headline banner, I immediately got turned off at the ‘winner’ image being portrayed, because it’s kinda old. It’s over-used, especially the image where he (Angara) is using a particular dark-skinned person in the 110 photo. It has mass appeal. This is not television where they have to buy airtime, this is their own website. If there’s any medium that is able to grab your attention and promote your personality to brand yourself, it should be this. Instead they’re giving us the same old images that are boring. (FGD # 3) This statement reflects what Teehankee (2006) cites as Filipino voters’ preference for simple messages and uncomplicated images, given their general frustration with traditional politics. It was very evident from the interviews that the younger respondents had a natural aversion towards anything that resembled politics. However, a few clarified that the distaste for politics did not necessarily mean they did not follow political developments. This cynical view towards politics is rooted in history, where citizens were ‘so disgusted by endemic corruption’ (Wurfel, 1988). Meantime, participants were divided about sites that provided a more personal side of the candidate outside of his or her political career to humanize him or her in the eyes of site visitors. The branding of Francis ‘Chiz’ Escudero in his website earned mixed reviews from participants across all age groups (Figure 16): J: The site is refreshing. The site doesn’t have a political feel to it. V: Why does he need to show his family photo in the website, to show that he is approachable, that he is a family man? (Focus Group # 5) T: My dilemma is that because of this, it doesn’t come across that he’s a Senator. He’s personalized the website. When I read his profile or look at his pictures, it makes me more familiar, it catches my attention. A: But to me it worked, the whole idea. I like the info that’s presented in so far as there are blogs, many links. Even the stuff he’s done in Congress, his proposed bills. I think what he’s trying to do again, he’s negotiating ‘this is me’ as a 111 senator, and me as a regular person, and I think that’s key. (Focus Group # 3) Figure 16. Website of Sen. Francis ‘Chiz’ Escudero (mainpage) Older participants whose ages ranged from 30 to 40 years old were particularly uncomfortable with Escudero’s image, which they felt was being branded as a celebrity, based on the amount and quality of photos in his photo gallery. They labeled him ‘GQ’ (Gentlemen’s Quarterly), in reference to the popular men’s magazine or glamour shots that typically show variations of solo pictures of the candidate. Younger participants were more accepting of this branding strategy that was evident to them in the website of Escudero: A: He got my attention, from the color of his website which is blue, and of course his picture, which was celebrity-ish. (Focus Group # 1) Most of the older participants composed of students and professionals based in Singapore argued that Escudero’s photo album belonged to a more 112 appropriate site such as Friendster, an observation that was echoed in another focus group discussion among younger participants: M: But why are most of his photos solo shots of himself? It’s like a Friendster account. I would also like to see other shots, not just solo pictures. (FGD # 5) The older participants argued that such photos would only be appreciated by fans or supporters of Escudero and that they would rather see photos of the candidate in action with real people, images that show the candidate to be natural and sincere, not glamorized, nor appearing in stereotypical images shaking hands with the poor or standing with the president, hands raised in victory. In studying the phenomenon of celebrity politicians in the Philippines, Maniago (2007) noted that politicians who are members of a strong political descent create a celebrity status of some sort, as television hosts or actors, product endorsers or radio program hosts. Escudero, a second-generation politician, did not capitalize too much on his father’s name and reputation as former Agrarian Secretary, but instead maximized the media in bolstering his bid for the senate. He hosted a radio program for a popular television and radio network, offering free legal advice on the airwaves, while serving as congressman for his district. He and Antonio Trillanes achieved celebrity status, by virtue of their being vocal members of the political opposition, who frequently appeared in the news on television, radio, print and even in online media websites. Some participants were accepting of candidates’ use of celebrities online, as long as the advertisements or photos were not prominently placed in the site and visitors had the option of viewing them or not. Celebrity political endorsement, characterized as the use of personalities from show-business for 113 political activities, specifically in election campaigning (Henneberg and Chen, 2007), is a fixture in Philippine campaigns. They are seen to be a part of an entertaining supporting cast who make a political pitch for candidates in advertisements, campaign rallies, promotional films, songs and music videos that have pushed up the campaign expense (Hofilena, 2006). The older participants noted that celebrities appearing in candidate campaigns should at least be wholesome personalities or role models, such as the selection of popular teen singer/actress Sarah Geronimo, appearing in Angara’s site (Figure 17). Geronimo, unlike most popular young stars, has managed to maintain a good girl image before the public and has endorsed a host of products, including a computer school. Her appearance in Angara’s campaign ads in television and on his website fits into his campaign platform of promoting education and reflects what Henneberg and Chen (2007) claim, that a celebrity who is perceived to have a high level of integrity can increase or reinforce the trust and credibility in the candidate. Figure 17. Close-up screenshot of downloadable tv ad in Angara’s site 114 Despite the lack of conclusive evidence on the effect of celebrity endorsements on political outcomes, celebrities are believed to have the ability to influence the behavior of their fans in other arenas (Garthwaite and Moore, 2008). Kiko Pangilinan, who married into one of the most popular celebrity families in the local entertainment industry and whose family photo appears prominently in his website’s main page, triggered a lively debate among most participants in all of the focus group discussions (Figure 18). The arguments centered on whether Pangilinan deliberately used his family to further his campaign, or whether he simply wanted to portray an image of a family man who just happened to be the husband and step-father of local celebrities. Regardless of the real intentions of the campaign manager or the candidate himself in prominently displaying the family photo in the site, Pangilinan was seen to share a similar social identity with his showbiz family, in the context of Filipino kinship (Maniago, 2007). Figure 18. Screenshot of Pangilinan’s homepage with family photo 115 The participants from the Philippines and Singapore, whose ages ranged from 18 to 40 years old, also reported that they were either distracted by the image, or this was a drawing factor to keep them on the site and explore its other sections. Those who were distracted said that they got stuck on the family photo and wanted to wander off to other links to look for more photos of the showbiz members of the family: T: One can’t help but to focus on the celebrites. B: Why does he (candidate) have to always show his celebrity family? He could’ve placed it in the biography section, and not where the family picture is the first thing you’ll see when the page opens. (Focus group # 6) Respondents also demanded originality from campaign slogans or messages, which should be clear, believable and at the same time witty, such as Arroyo’s ‘pag bad ka, lagot ka,’ (roughly translated means ‘if you’re bad, watch out’) which, although recycled from the previous election cycle, continues to be catchy because it is in a language that resonates with the youth. Some participants were also familiar with Manuel Villar’s recycled tagline on his website, ‘Sipag at Tyaga’, (loosely translated means hard work and perseverance) who were able to connect it with his offline campaign. The majority of participants were attracted to sites which carried bright blue colors combined with yellow or white, while a few were indifferent to sites sporting dark colors in their homepage backgrounds, inferring that the color scheme goes with the image being projected by the candidate. A few were curious about the choices of orange and green in some websites, except for those who said they were conscious about the environment and did not mind green shades. What they didn’t like was the presentation in one 116 particular website which had plain white for its background and which one respondent said could have been greatly improved since it also reflects on the candidate it promotes. The website of Antonio Trillanes (Figure 19) was described by some as resembling a free site, or a website of a news organization, with some going as far as saying that their own blogs were better than the candidate’s: B: There’s probably a PR man who does his site even while he’s in jail. He should’ve gotten somebody really good, because it also reflects on him. They should’ve made a better job in his website. (Focus Group # 6). Figure 19. Screenshot of Trillanes’ homepage Trillanes, who was detained and charged with mutiny and rebellion for the failed Oakwood mutiny in 2003, was allowed to file his certificate of candidacy, pending the resolution of his case. Trillanes’ campaign was boosted by supporters from civilians and the military who were responsible for creating his site and maintaining his other online accounts. However, one 117 participant said that the candidate’s incarceration was no excuse for coming out with a website of such poor quality: T: It falls short of your expectations, because he himself publicized that he’s going to campaign through the Web, and here it’s very disappointing because it wasn’t maintained. J: But he’s in jail, and computer not allowed there? T: But he has people. Tthey could’ve maximized it. They failed to use it effectively. (Focus Group # 2) Sidestepping the lack of aesthetic appeal in Trillanes’ site, most respondents still felt his image was consistently projected as a rebel or someone who opposed the administration unlike Villar, whom a few respondents thought did not have a clear branding on his site (Figure 20). This was despite the fact that he was among the candidates who had aggressively campaigned in traditional media using his tagline and brand ‘Sipag at Tiyaga’. By imbibing these traits of perseverance and hard work, Villar was projected in his advertisements as triumphing over the odds, from being a shrimp vendor in the slums of Tondo, Manila, to becoming a successful businessman in the housing construction industry and to finally being elected into office. While some participants recognized the tagline in the site and associated it with Villar, whom they thought came across in the website as a successful entrepreneur, some did not get a clear picture of the identity being promoted in the site: N: Kiko’s site had clear branding, that he was a family man and competent. Trillanes also had a clear branding, that ‘hey look at me I’m a rebel’. This orange color in the background, it doesn’t really communicate to me what kind of person he is. He has some stuff about how he was poor and everything, but as to the branding? There’s no particular thing. (Focus Group # 3) 118 Villar had just served as Senate president when he ran for a second term in office, which perhaps influenced the selection of images that were projected in his site. Figure 20. Close-up of section in Villar’s site with brand-logo Meantime, younger participants who were below the age of 30, somehow felt or saw some type of dissonance with older candidates who employed websites in campaigning to voters. They assumed that most politicians had nothing to do with the site, that they neither read nor answered queries on the site, and that the website was handled by their staff. To them, the website was put up to merely have a presence online: G: It’s interesting. Like when you scroll down, he utilizes internet-specific things like a podcast, having an online poll. He’s trying to be interactive. At first thought, it’s not him, because he’s old and serious. And then here now in his site you have a techie senator who is up-to-date. (Focus Group # 4) This situation can be analysed in terms of marketing an old ‘product’. However, there are ways that it can still appeal to the online audience, whose preferences for presentation and content also vary (Bowers-Brown, 2003). While most participants in the focus group discussions considered image and branding to be an important aspect in Web campaigning, they also 119 emphasized that what is projected online through the candidate website, should be consistent with what is projected offline as well. Apart from focusing on the branding of candidates in the websites, respondents also placed importance on the user-friendliness of the site that allowed them to explore its various features. 5.2 Layout & Navigability The majority of the participants saw the value in cleverly organizing different sections in the website that made it easy for them to navigate within the site and search for specific topics. This observation has basis, especially since the site served as a channel for learning about the candidate and supporting the campaign, where voters should be attracted to and enjoy looking through it. Based on the ICS Report Cards Criteria (2000), the overall quality of appearance and ease of navigation ultimately determines the success of the site. One respondent suggested that candidate websites include a search bar function: G: With a search bar, it’s easier, because sometimes you can’t easily spot the buttons. With a search bar you can easily find things, without guessing if a topic was in the biography section, for example. You’re not wasting time, it’s easy to navigate. (Focus Group # 6) Participants gave positive feedback on sites, such as Angara’s, that guided them around the website by providing clearly-defined categories of sections such as news about the candidate, differentiated from updates about the campaign that they can choose to open or not. Participants expected to see the campaign platform prominently placed in the main home page in a condensed version that is easy to read, without having to open another page. 120 Some wanted to easily spot the latest news developments about the candidate in the main window. They also took issue with layouts that provided navigational buttons in the upper portion of the main page along with another set of clickable topics on one side of the page which tended to confuse them. Some particularly liked the simplicity in sites, such as Villar’s website, that did not require site users to scroll down to see more information, because the main page already allowed them to see all the features and categories. They expressed preference for these sites instead of those which placed all the information in the main page using small fonts that tended to overwhelm them. This was the case with Trillanes’ website, whose main page was littered with sections containing news items. Participants were unanimous in saying they will not bother to read long paragraphs of texts. They meantime placed value in sites which allowed them to go back to the homepage with ease, with fast loading of pages. In line with this observation, participants were biased towards sites that provided links to popular sites, such as you-tube, Friendster and Multiply, where some candidates had their own account (Figure 21). Links to a candidate’s own blog was also seen to be hip. According to younger participants, one way to prove that the candidate was cool and ‘in’ with the youth, was by providing interesting outside links should the visitor wish to exit the website. Participants were generally indifferent to the predominant use of English in candidate websites. Participants however had divergent views on Escudero’s website which mixed English and Filipino in some sections. 121 Figure 21. Close-up of section in Pangilinan’s site with link to YouTube and Multiply While some appreciated this effort to use Filipino or Tagalog to cater to audiences who prefer using the national language, some felt uncomfortable with the use of very formal Filipino instead of a conversational tone to communicate the campaign message. Participants were more open to Pangilinan’s website which offered visitors the option of whether to view a particular section in English or Filipino. The tendency of these candidates to use a language that in this case, is used by some segments of the online audience, is seen as one way of creating a perception of similarity that could lead to effective persuasion (Maniago, 2007). Furthermore, the usage of Filipino provides a social bond that is not possible with standard English (Maniago, 2007: 511). To illustrate, even President Arroyo, in capping one 122 State of the Nation speech that is traditionally delivered in English, appealed for unity in Tagalog, then in other major Philippine languages (Navera, 2006). 5.3 Interactivity Respondents expected to experience interactivity in the campaign websites. There are two kinds of interactivity that will be discussed separately in the following sub-sections: computer or network-mediated human interaction, which refers to the communicative exchange between people on the Internet, and site interactivity, which is related to the engagement of the medium itself where people can command it to provide information or perform functions (Stromer-Galley, 2000). 5.3.1 Computer-mediated Human Interaction Participants based in the Philippines and abroad placed great emphasis in providing a feedback mechanism in candidate websites to show that they are accessible to the public in cyberspace. The presence of this feature which can take the form of a guestbook, forum or ‘contact us’ icon, was seen to give the impression that the candidate can be personal with site visitors, and showed that he’s up-to-date with the technology (Figure 22). Aside from sustaining the attention of site visitors, participants considered this an important feature where visitors can post messages, such as suggestions and comments on a proposed legislation, what they expect from the candidate once elected, their views on the candidate’s stand on issues, and general queries about the campaign or the candidate. This mechanism was considered useful especially for constituents from far-flung areas who are seeking financial and other forms of assistance from the candidate. 123 Figure 22. Example of a participative features on Escudero’s site Participants expected to be able to contact the candidates via their websites, because to them it provides another channel of communication that is deemed vital to those want to be in public service. In addition, participants who expressed interest in supporting a candidate’s advocacy or programs expected the website to provide some contact information or links that will enable them to do so: T: If you’re supposed to be in the business of public service, then this is one way, right? You’re telling the browser this is who I am, and this is what I’ve done. I don’t see “ how do I get in touch with you. Maybe you can get into this advocacy.” (Focus Group 2) The participants stressed that one-way communication in candidate sites is equivalent to propaganda and shows that the candidates do not really care about the voters and what they think. Respondents in the focus group interviews expect a two-way exchange, with the candidate himself responding to queries or comments in the 124 website. Otherwise, some would view the feedback feature as a mere political ploy: G: He (co-participant) pointed out that the website came across as propaganda, but that can be neutralized with the mechanism that solicits the feedback of the youth. (Focus Group 1) Furthermore, participants across age groups expressed preference for reading the exchanges that are posted in site forums or message boards. One referred to tagboards as providing more transparent, candid and instantaneous feedback without the hassle of having to register first before posting a message. A few of the younger participants meanwhile thought that the registration requirement in sites is not only an inconvenient procedure but an exercise that constrains self-expression: G: Why not place tagboards in the front page so that it’s faster? There’s no more hassle, because with that, with the registration requirement, you’re going to censor what you’re going to say. (Focus Group #1) D: When you register, it sort of limits you, because when you have to register, it’s makes you lazy to do so. Why do I have to enter my personal information anyway? (Focus Group # 2) The desire of some participants to be able to post comments without disclosing their identities, points to one affordance of the technology which is anonymity. The older respondents meanwhile understood the need for requiring this condition in some websites, seeing how the feedback device can be used to post unfavorable comments towards the 125 candidate. According to Joinson (2001), the reduction of social cues results in anonymity that may lead to a loss in accountability and responsibility on the part of users. T: They may have done that to screen. It’s because some like to post anything to attack (the candidate) under assumed names…when you’re serious in your purpose to send in your message, you will take pains. But if you’re a prankster who just likes to curse, it’s easy, you won’t take that long route. (Focus Group #2) While there are risks involved in opening up the site for communication between candidates and the online audience, the advantage lies in making the users think that the candidate is sensitive, responsive and trustworthy (Trammell et al, 2006). Interestingly, participants across age groups both overseas and in the Philippines wanted to read the exchanges among site visitors in the website in order to be educated on the current topics that preoccupy the public, and from these discussions, be able to make sense of these issues. This was particularly true for younger participants aged 18 to 29 years old, who wanted to know the important issues of the day and preferred reading about it from other ordinary citizens, and not necessarily from the stand or position of the candidate. Participants were suspicious of forums or guest books that carried mostly positive comments or feedback from site visitors. Some participants noted that this ‘preaching to the choir’ phenomena is expected in most of the candidate websites visited, where positive feedback generally comes from supporters of the candidate whose site they were visiting. 126 Participants thought that this rendered a website ‘fake’. Thus they would rather see a balance of both positive and negative opinions from site visitors. In the same way that favorable views about the candidate on his site was seen to affect its credibility, so did online polls which participants thought painted an inaccurate picture. According to them, the poll results tended to reflect mostly the views of that candidate’s supporters. This observation by the participants echoes the findings in some studies which revealed that citizens are expected to seek information that is in line with their political interests, beliefs and orientation, and to avoid information that opposes and challenges their views (Norris, 2001; Sunstein, 2001). Most participants meanwhile appreciated the presence of the candidate’ contact information that included office phone numbers or email addresses, and invitations to join the mailing list for the dissemination of e-newsletters. 5.3.2 Site Interactivity Participants from the younger age groups demanded that candidate websites possess a media-interactive capacity such as audio and video downloads of campaign jingles, ringtones and advertisements, podcasts, flash technology, and animation, in order to draw and sustain the interest of site visitors: J: I like it interactive, with many moving images…I like something like NBA’s site, with many things you can see. (Focus Group # 5) 127 They were particularly awed by sites that featured other platforms like SMS (short messaging service) to acquire information about the campaign. Some participants found themselves bored with sites that were static with nothing to click and expressed preference for reading information about the candidate in an interactive format without too much text. They however noted that these elements should not be so entertaining as to distract visitors from the substantial portion of the site containing the campaign message and platform of the candidate. More than providing special effects on the site, they also favored sites that contained important information about the candidate. The older participants whose ages ranged from 30 to 40 years old, whether based in the country or overseas were more discriminating in assessing the interactive elements in candidate websites: J: The running visuals of his pictures don’t really serve a purpose. M: It’s just to have something interactive. (Focus Group # 4) Participants across age groups were wary of dead links or links that opened to blank pages, while they were impressed with sites that linked to other popular sites such as YouTube and social networking sites, as well as websites of news organizations that provided other information about the candidate. One participant based in Singapore particularly liked to click on RSS feeds so that she could be updated on developments about the candidate from other news sources. 128 5.4 Summary of Chapter Findings In summary, the focus group participants in this study were found to be a discriminating breed, regardless of their age, social status or level of expertise in using the Internet. While some could still buy into the personality-based brand of politics that very much defines offline campaigns in the country, the rest of the respondents were not too willing to allow the same campaign techniques to completely pervade the online arena. This reflects what Newman (2006) suggests, that candidates have to appeal to more segments of voters who have varied interests and concerns. As a result, political brands (e.g. the political parties and individual politicians) have to be developed with distinct identities on the one hand, but with a broad overall appeal as well. The challenge therein is in achieving this tricky balance. Furthermore, Newman stressed that the brand identity of a politician is becoming the most effective way of informing voters, where the candidate's strengths are emphasized and an opponent's weaknesses are highlighted. In the Philippines, post-Marcos campaigning had been characterized by issues, image and machine, in place of the traditional guns, goons and gold brand of politics (Teehankee, 2006). In his section on election campaigning in East and Southeast Asia, Teehankee claims that the growing influence of media and information technology ushered in this change in campaign style, which inevitably gave rise to showbiz and media personalities in elections. He also adds: “Ideally, the issues that a candidate cultivates should determine his or her image to the voting public. If a candidate successfully communicates what he or she stands for, a positive image will be projected to the public.” 129 Very few of the participants from the focus group discussions in Manila were aware or had previously seen the websites, while none from the overseas respondents saw any of the six candidate websites that were selected for this study. This could partially be explained by the fact that in cyberspace, as in the real world, most people’s interest in government and politics pales in comparison to their interest in business, commerce, sports, entertainment or in domestic or personal matters (Margolis, Resnick and Levy, 2003). This is illustrated by the list of top Philippine websites, where the top slots are shared by news networks, gaming, retail or commercial sites, music and social networking sites (hhtp://topphilippinewebsites.com). Regardless of what appears to be political apathy or aversion among some segments of the population, there needs to be an active effort on the part of campaigns to market these sites and attract target audiences, which can be done via a direct promotion of the Web address by means of media advertising (Drummond, 2006). Like any Web ‘product’, candidate websites must be easy to find via search engines, or directly known by the potential audience (Schubert, 2003). Candidates, their campaign managers, public relations consultants and Web producers are thus faced with the daunting task of primarily making the online community aware of their websites and, secondly, encouraging them to explore its many features, enough to make a positive impact on site visitors. This positive impact could be derived from perceptions of credibility of a website, which most participants equate with the presence of two-way communication between candidate and site visitors, where audiences can ask about and have a say in issues. The participants also 130 consider website credibility in terms of promoting transparency and balance in the feedback that was coming from audiences, where both positive and negative comments are open for all site visitors to see. This policy adheres to what a 2008 Universal McCann survey notes, that on the Internet, honesty is the best policy. Online audiences know and understand this new medium, and they expect that those who want their presence known in cyberspace should manifest the same, if not a higher, level of knowledge and skill via the information they provide and how they present this in their website. If candidates really know their online audiences, they will present and highlight information that will spark their interest, and do it in a manner where visitors could easily and freely select the kind and amount of information they want. Audiences particularly demand that candidate websites utilize the multimedia capacity that the technology has to offer, at the same time provide the substantial information required of a candidate who is launching or reintroducing himself to the online community. The following chapter aims to answer the fourth and final research question on whether Filipino online campaigns accord with global trends that is marked by political marketing. It also seeks to determine whether there is a distinct Filipino-style of Web campaigning. 131 Chapter Six FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 6. Filipino Web Campaigns : A marriage of global and local influences This final empirical chapter will tackle the fourth and final research question on whether the online campaign practices of Filipino candidates accord with popular trends in Internet campaigns, or whether they are marked by a unique set of characteristics that is distinctively Filipino. The analysis will specifically revolve around the U.S. model of online campaigns, since the Philippine system of government and style of politics is closely-patterned after America’s candidatecentered electoral politics (Abinales and Amoroso, 2005). The following sub-sections will discuss these comparisons in detail. 6.1 Candidate-Centered Campaigns The findings show that all of the websites in the study mimicked, to a large degree, U.S. campaign websites. A few of the candidates and their campaign managers in this study made reference to the websites of former Democratic nominee candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in influencing the look and content of their respective campaign websites. Similar to what U.S. candidates are doing in presenting comprehensive information about themselves in their websites (Powell and Cowart, 2003), the candidate websites studied in this thesis are also information-heavy. Personal biographies and career highlights come in various forms, usually in dynamic formats such as milestones that copied the presentation in Clinton’s website (Figure 23 and Figure 24). 132 Figure 23. Screenshot of Clinton’s Biography section (Clinton’s milestone in clickable horizontal format in top portion of page) Figure 24. Screenshot of Angara’s biography section (Angara’s milestone in clickable vertical format on the right side of page) Meantime, the technology’s use to mobilize support for campaigns which characterizes most U.S. political websites (Klotz, 2005) was present to some degree, particularly in only three out of six of the Filipino websites studied. Detained opposition candidate Antonio Trillanes was among these three who seized this opportunity at the start of the campaign, since he had no means to actively promote his candidacy and organize support for his 133 campaign. According to Trillanes’ spokesperson, one of the main goals of his online presence was to build a social or political network of supporters on whom they could count on to help in the offline campaign: ‘You see we had very limited resources. People were asking for campaign materials so what we did, we posted or we provided a link where they can download the format for a streamer or a poster, and many people actually downloaded the format for the poster and have the posters printed themselves, at their own expense’. -Atty. Rey Robles Attorney Robles added that the website made up for their campaign’s lack of resources and manpower, since volunteers and staff would have traditionally travelled from one province to the next to disseminate campaign paraphernalia in tandem with a campaign rally. Their online appeal resulted in people organizing themselves, downloading streamer designs and even taking care of the expenses to have them printed, distributed and posted in various locations. In terms of multimedia offerings, Filipino websites attempted to be as vibrant as their U.S. counterparts, but paled in comparison. For example, live video streaming and candidates addressing site visitors in video clips -features present in U.S. websites -- were non-existent in the sample of Filipino campaign websites studied in this paper. Moreover, features in the websites of Filipino candidates that enabled the downloading of logos, ringtones and poster designs merely reflected those of American candidates’ sites. Figure 25 shows the section in Democratic nominee Barack Obama’s site with downloadable campaign paraphernalia, while Figure 26 shows Arroyo’s site. 134 Figure 25. Screenshot of section with downloadable campaign material in Obama’s site Figure 26. Screenshot of section with downloadable campaign material in Arroyo’s site Opinion polling, which is characteristic of political marketing and part and parcel of U.S. campaigns, was employed in a few Filipino candidate sites which sought to set the candidates’ agenda and at the same time get the pulse of site visitors on a variety of issues, from the chances of a candidate’s winning the elections, to the modernization of the election process. Linking to 135 popular social networking sites was another practice that was common between U.S. and Filipino campaign sites. Another feature common to both U.S. and Philippine campaign websites, although true for only one website in the study sample, was the utilization of the SMS platform to disseminate information about the campaign. This function was present in Pangilinan’s site, and was similar to Obama’s website. There are a few features that Filipino campaign websites studied here did not take up from the U.S. models. These include displays for the promotion and sale of campaign t-shirts and caps, usually to raise additional funds for campaign, and features that enable cash donations. In the Philippines, these campaign items are commonly distributed for free at campaign rallies and other venues. Candidates, on the other hand, have legitimate concerns for not utilizing the sites as fundraising tools, as the previous chapter revealed, fearing they could be set-up by their political opponents. When it comes to the unique features of Filipino candidate websites, it would appear that Angara’s site has the sole distinction of using the website to give specific details about the telephone numbers and other contact information in his office for those inquiring about medical funding assistance. While the rest of the study sample contained general contact information on how to reach their campaigns or offices, Angara’s site had a separate icon for this purpose. Given that he was a re-electionist senator who had the logistics and means to provide medical funding assistance, the others were also incumbent officials who had the same advantage over the non-incumbents, yet 136 his was the only website that displayed this feature. This shows that his campaign staff fully appreciated the culture of the masses to seek financial assistance for various needs from their elected officials. It is interesting to note that while the site of Pangilinan did not have this similar feature, requests for other kinds of assistance from site visitors flooded the participative features on his site, prompting his office to create a division that would specifically address their needs which ranged from job applications to solicitations for project funding. As a whole, Filipino Web campaigns’ imitations of the U.S. online campaign style is limited to providing a wide array of information about the candidates, their political achievements, and stand on issues. This is partly the result of having similar candidate-centered and highly-personalized systems in electoral campaigns (Gibson, 2004). Based on the earlier findings about the motivations and perceptions of Filipino candidates on Web campaigns, there are justifiable reasons for Philippine candidates’ non adoption of some features from U.S. sites. On the other hand, there was nothing exclusively Filipino across all the websites studied, except for Angara’s, whose feature about offering medical funding assistance reflects the patronage-based politics that characterizes our political culture (Hofilena, 2006). 6.2 Significance in the Overall Campaign Strategy The supplemental role that Web campaigning plays in the Philippines mirrors the U.S. practice. Where television is seen to be ‘the natural home for candidates to sell themselves to the American public since the 1950s’ (Schultz, 2004), this is similar to the situation in the Philippines where the medium remains top choice for promoting candidates during elections (Hofilena, 137 2006). Television was noted to be the most practical approach in reaching the average American voter in a country as large and populous as the United States, where it would be physically impossible to meet all the voters, and secondly, ‘most Americans do not go out to see debates, town forums or stump speeches’ (Schultz, 2004: xi). Advertising or campaigning in the Philippines, which is an archipelago, is also suited to televised campaigning. Political advertisements on television may require huge resources, but a spokesperson for the political opposition argued that these ads ensure wider access to voters, wider exposure and cost less than campaign sorties (PJR Reports, 2007). This opinion was shared by Escudero, who stressed that while he thought that Web campaigns were important, it merely supplemented his offline campaigns, which were largely waged on television and radio and not in traditional campaign venues such as in the market place, schools or town halls: “We used media more. We used DZRH. I had a radio presence once a week. During the campaign period, it intensified. I only attended two proclamation rallies, went to two provincial radio stations.” -Sen. Francis Escudero While digital campaigns serve to supplement campaigns launched in the traditional media in both the U.S. and in the Philippines, it can be argued that Web campaigning should figure more prominently in campaigns in the States compared to the Philippines, considering the fact that the United States has high levels of Internet penetration at over 50% of the total population. The Philippines on the other hand has a relatively low Internet penetration at less than 19% of the total population (http://www.internetworldstats.com). 138 U.S. candidates also had a head start in utilizing the technology in the early 1990s, whereas in the Philippines, the first recorded use of the Internet as a political tool was only towards the end of that decade (Pabico, 2004). 6.3 Cautious Interaction with the Electorate This study argues that Filipino and American candidates are alike in engaging in limited communication with the online audience. The findings revealed that more than half of the candidates interviewed for this study were willing to open the lines of communication with site visitors, which mirror some of the findings in the literature regarding US candidates’ interaction with the online electorate. It has been observed that political candidates in the United States, with the exception of a few, failed to utilize the Internet in engaging in conversation with voters and with the youth (Bennett and Xenos, 2004; Teeling, 2006; Stromer-Galley, 2000). The findings showed that local websites offered discussion forums and guest books that required registration before visitors could post their messages. Most messages turned out to be favorable towards the candidates, showing similarity to the profile of visitors to U.S. sites that consisted mostly of supporters of the candidates, followed by neutral or undecided voters (Bimber and Davis, 2003). Only two of the local candidates whose sites contained participative features meanwhile exerted efforts to respond to the messages themselves or through their staff. A more common occurrence was the exchange between and among site visitors, who commented on each other’s views or opinions. The study indicates that candidates, whether Americans or Filipinos, are aware of the risks involved with opening a line of communication with site visitors. They seem to bear in mind that there could be undecided or even 139 supporters of rival candidates who could access their site. Moreover, they are concerned with losing control over issues in these online discussions that could potentially harm their image (Stromer-Galley, 2000). 6.4 Absence of Fund-raising This study asserts that Filipino candidates have good reason for not using websites to raise funds for their campaigns like their U.S. counterparts do. While the Internet has served to mobilize support in terms of donations and volunteers in the U.S. in the mid 1990s (Powell and Cowart, 2003), this is not the case in the Philippines. Research has shown that the Internet has proven to be a successful fund-raising tool for American candidates. John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2000 raised $6.4 million, while Albert Gore, Jr., was reported to have raised $1.6 million via the Internet in the second quarter of 2000, from an overall total of $33.8 million. Estimates for George W. Bush were proportionally lower, $2.6 million from a total of just over $90 million (Powell and Cowart, 2003). It has been reported that the Philippine’s political elite has latched on to Obama’s fund-raising strategy, particularly his use of the Internet to harvest small individual donations (http://worldblog.msnbc.com/archive/com). However, in the Philippines, websites have not been utilized for this purpose as of yet, based on the results of this study’s interviews with candidates and their campaign staff. Two of the respondents in this study stressed that they found the process to be legally tenuous and circuitous as a result of the lack of technological support in the Philippines such as Paypal, that would allow for online contributions. The current laws covering donations also make it tedious for both donors and campaigns to raise and collect funds over the Internet. 140 More importantly, the prevailing campaign environment offline inhibited the candidates from using their websites to raise money for their campaigns. In particular, they were apprehensive that gambling contributions, which have been reported to fill up campaign coffers (Coronel, 2000), would find their way into their campaigns and be used as an issue against them in the media. 6.5 Summary of Chapter Findings To sum up the findings in this chapter, Filipino politicians are following U.S. digital campaign trends in infusing their campaign websites with an extensive array of information for their discriminating audience. They are also eager to use interactive and multimedia elements on their websites like their U.S. equivalents, and that which is seen as an effective marketing practice on the Web. However, a majority of the local campaign websites studied here fail miserably in this aspect, since they lack more dynamic presentations of candidates, who could be directly addressing site visitors in interactive formats. They could likewise provide video streaming of campaign events and podcasts which can allow audiences to listen to recorded audio of the candidate’s interviews or speeches. Similar to what is occurring in U.S. sites, it is also apparent that there is not much deliberative exchange taking place in this so-called public sphere in Philippine cyberspace, given the limited forms for interactive communication available on campaign websites. Some of the content and quality of messages coming from site visitors were also found to not set the tone for serious discussion online, with most messages showing positive remarks for the candidate whose site was being visited, and where some are even requests for all sorts of assistance that is indicative of the culture of 141 patronage-politics prevailing in the country. It is also evident that the younger Filipino politicians are taking cues from U.S. candidates in utilizing the medium to build their support base, which is considered a good marketing practice since supporters can help to promote candidates both online and offline. However, unlike U.S. campaigns, Filipino candidates are also intentionally choosing to stay away from fund-raising online due to the overarching political psyche that could prove to be detrimental to their public image. This concern is accompanied by the lack of technological infrastructure in the country that allows for contributing to the campaign, as well as existing government regulation that puts off would-be contributors to the campaign. The findings suggest that Filipino candidates are playing catch-up with U.S. politicians in terms of using the technology in accessing audiences that are not found in traditional campaign rallies, and in reaching segments of the population who are based overseas, and those who have tuned out from television in search of alternative sources of political information. That campaigns have been extended to cyberspace can be understood in terms of the network society that politicians need to be a part of (Castells, 1996). This could also be a result of fatigue with the television medium, whereby the audience is no longer found to be very receptive to the attempts of imagemakers and as manipulable as publicists thought (Coronel, 2003). Coronel further noted that: ‘Television as an arena of electoral battle, therefore, is a minefield. The old formulas no longer work. The audience is fickle, and the messages do not always come across as they were intended. This is why the terrain of 2004 is not as even or as predictable as the campaign strategists think’. 142 Most candidates, however, still cannot resist the pull of television, owing to its popularity among the citizenry and availability in the country. This is why, like U.S. candidates, Filipino politicians will still campaign and advertise largely on this medium, as if to sell themselves like a commodity. On a larger scale, this phenomenon also reflects the influence of consumerism, or Americanisation, where the global public is increasingly thinking and behaving like a consumer in all areas of life, including politics (LeesMarshment, 2005; Schaferrer, 2006). A few candidates also practiced political marketing on their websites, similar to the aggressive practice in U.S. campaign websites. This custom involves media spinning and candidates’ real-time adjustments to the demands of their audience which are determined via surveys and online polling (Lilleker and Marshment, 2005; Castells, 2004). This mirrors the idea of informational politics advanced by Castells (2004), where the Internet has become the privileged space of politics where one ends up playing the same game although at varying degrees. Specifically, local websites were observed to feature opinion polling, surveys, and provided outside links including social networking sites that served to manage and prop up their image in response to what their audiences demanded. This study confirms the findings from earlier research that Filipino online campaigns have a natural tendency not just to follow American politics, but to replicate the digital practices of U.S. candidates (Kluver et al. 2007). In line with this, there are no uniquely Filipino characteristic common across the study sample. There was however one campaign website that featured a 143 distinctive function that facilitated assistance to those seeking medical funding for their health needs. This chapter has attempted to illuminate the extent to which Filipino Web campaigns imitate popular trends that usually originate from the United States. In particular, the study showed that the prevailing political psyche and campaign environment, coupled with the lack of technological infrastructure, are factors why local politicians are deliberately under-utilizing the potential of the Internet in terms of raising funds for their campaign. On the other hand, the length of public service comes into play in candidates’ active decision not to maximize the technology in expanding their support base. In short, it is no longer an issue of the lack of skills or imagination of campaigns that contribute to websites’ lack of sophistication, but rather a matter of bowing to the dominant culture that has characterized local politics for some time now. With the exception of Senator Trillanes, the lack of resources was also not a factor in having a not so high-tech website. In conclusion, this chapter has argued that the brand of Filipino online campaigns is not merely a consequence of the transfer of Western techniques, necessarily combined with local flavor. They are, instead, the result of a conscious and calculated decision on the part of the candidates, in line with their respective political goals and opinions and also in response to the realities on the ground. These, however, do not mean that these practices are necessarily effective or correct, or will even hold true for the next round of elections. The following and final chapter will highlight the key findings of the study in answer to the four research questions. It will present the significance 144 of the research and make a prognosis of Web campaigning in the Philippines. Lastly, the chapter will also acknowledge the limitations of this study and point to possible new directions for research in this area. 145 Chapter Seven CONCLUSION 7. Conclusion: Key Findings This chapter will present the important findings that answers the four research questions of this thesis, and will be broken down into four sections. The rest of this chapter will discuss the significance of the study and its contribution to the literature on Web campaigns. The succeeding portion will provide a prognosis of online campaigns in the Philippines and state the reasons for such, while the last section will deal with the study limitations as well as suggestions for future studies in this area. 7.1 Candidate Promotion In answer to the first research question: “ How did the candidates use their websites to promote themselves to the electorate? ” this thesis concludes that the majority of the candidates in the study, with the aid of Web professionals, utilized much of the multimedia capacity of the technology in promoting their candidacies on their respective websites via downloadable commercials, logos and other dynamic audio and video formats. The results of the website evaluation in the meantime show, that apart from providing users with a comprehensive range of information about the candidates’ professional background, legislative record and other past achievements, a majority of the websites offered various features to encourage participation from site visitors. These included online polls, guest books, visitor comments sections and electronic forums where users could post comments and questions and likewise read previously-posted messages. In line with this, 146 most candidates, namely Angara, Pangilinan, Escudero and Trillanes, took turns with their campaign staff in responding to messages from site visitors. For independent candidates like Pangilinan, the campaign website served as a crucial component of the campaign since they lacked the machinery and funding to boost their efforts. For detained Navy officer Trillanes who was at a bigger disadvantage, the website was necessary to build up a network of supporters and to garner more sympathy for his cause. Escudero’s site also functioned to acquire the feedback of visitors and to recruit and organize his campaign volunteers. Meanwhile, Angara was the only senior legislator who incorporated a feedback feature in his website that specifically allowed visitors to post comments, although with a gentle reminder to them to refrain from using profanity. The websites of Angara and his fellow Congress veterans, Villar and Arroyo, deliberately did not display a function or feature seeking volunteers to join their campaign. From a marketing perspective, this study presumes that candidates utilized the website and its features in extending their ‘marketing reach’, specifically with the overseas Filipinos in mind, as well as those not within reach of traditional campaign sorties. Secondly, the website served as a rich source of information about the candidate, in a dynamic array of multimedia formats which are not available anywhere else. Photo galleries featuring the candidate in various fora, as well as personal information about the candidate’s family and activities outside of politics, can be accessed by site visitors at the click of a button. Meanwhile, the immediacy of the medium, where information can be regularly updated and feedback can be acquired from users, was put to good use by a majority of the candidates in the study. 147 The campaign staff was also able to organize their volunteers and task them to participate more actively in the campaign, as in the case of the younger senatorial aspirants who are still building a wider network of supporters via the participative features on their sites which is again considered a necessary marketing custom. This study likewise concludes that all the online campaigns studied here failed to effectively market their ‘brands’. For one, most of the campaigns, which can be viewed as marketing-oriented organizations did not incorporate and coordinate their online strategy with their offline marketing plan. Bowers-Brown (2003) stressed that to successfully position the website, an organization would need to rationalize its creation in the first place and determine how this would interact with its overall image. In addition, the organization would also have to establish the website’s purpose, its content and strategy managers, and in the end, evaluate the effectiveness of the website after the campaign season. Judging from the very low level of awareness of the six websites among focus group participants, the campaign organization likewise failed to effectively generate awareness of their sites. In terms of encouraging site visitors to remain on the site via easy navigation and interactive opportunities, most of the study sample however delivered in this aspect. 7.2 Candidates’ Motivations On the second research question: “ What were the candidates’ motivations in using the Internet for political campaigning? “, this study concludes that candidates and their campaign staff engaged in it because it is a cheap and hip way of reaching out to voters. Campaigning over the Internet costs relatively less than on traditional mass media, and it is a trend now in the 148 political world, with the mainstream media paying more and more attention to politicians’ activities on the Web, and with candidates themselves trying to engage bloggers even in the offline realm by scheduling meet-ups with them. Secondly, it bridges the gap between the campaign and hard-to-reach audiences, as well as niche markets not encountered in traditional campaign rallies and who rely on the Web for their information needs such as overseas Filipinos. The campaign websites’ role was unmistakably supplemental to the campaigns waged by candidates in the offline realm, particularly in the mass media, where a majority of the candidates launched political advertisements. While there is no conclusive evidence yet that would show that the online efforts of candidates was a factor in winning in the elections, this study found that candidates are nonetheless placing importance on this additional and alternative venue for waging their campaigns. This would be manifested in the resources and staff they appropriated for the creation and maintenance of the campaign website, as well as the amount of work they put in, in terms of updating the information on the site and responding to queries posted there. While the aforementioned point to the incentives of candidates for going online, this study also uncovered interesting information that shows why candidates would not be motivated to tap other uses of the technology. This study concludes that candidates have legitimate concerns for not utilizing their websites as their other counterparts do in democratic societies. This can be partially explained by the prevailing political culture in the country, more than the lack of skills or the technical infrastructure that would for example, facilitate campaign donations to the websites. Politicians know too well the practice of mud-slinging that traditionally characterize election 149 campaigns, where detractors and opponents can deposit ‘dirty money’ to the campaign kitty, which can later on be made an issue against them in the media-dominated space of politics. It is also perhaps this culture of bickering and fault-finding that dissuaded some candidates in the study from opening up a communication line with users in their websites, for fear of losing control over issues and the information posted on their sites. For candidates who did encourage feedback from site visitors, the registration requirement in the site served to deter users from posting verbal attacks. Meanwhile, this study also concludes that the length of public service of candidates also shaped their unique deployment of websites, where the more veteran politicians saw no need to mobilize more supporters via the websites, while the younger candidates seized the potential of the technology to recruit and rally more supporters in a bid to build up their network. This study also concludes that the weak party-system also necessitated candidates to come up with their own individual websites, which hardly made reference to the wider political alliances to which they belonged. 7.3 Audience Perceptions On the third research question: “ What were the audience perceptions of the candidates’ Internet campaigns? “, this study concludes that the audience has diverse views and preferences regarding online campaigns. In examining the online audience, it was observed that there is great diversity within this group in terms of intellectual capacity, emotional and political maturity and taste, as well as different levels of technical know-how. For instance, while some participants demanded ‘credible’ and ‘suitable’ representations that would suit the new ‘cool’ medium, others were 150 indifferent, and the rest were excited to find the celebrity-influenced style of campaigning that is prevalent in the offline environment. This study argues that while participants also had divergent views regarding the amount of information and the style and manner of presentation of the candidates on the websites, it is presumed that they generally want to be in charge in this aspect. For example, they expected to have control over how much detail they want to learn about the candidate via an interactive and dynamic format such as a historical timeline or biography instead of being bombarded with pages and pages of information enumerating or narrating a candidates’ performance, record and accomplishments. In addition, they expressed their desire to move out of the website to external sources of information, saying that since websites would typically serve as propaganda for candidates, outside links would more or less provide them a balanced perspective. This study likewise discovered that the respondents whose ages ranged from 18 to 40 years old, also exhibited varying degrees of willingness in terms of playing an active role in the campaign offline, whether joining a volunteer group, attending campaign rallies, or downloading and distributing campaign paraphernalia in their areas. Two issues emerged which this study found common to all focus group participants. First was their fixation on the image of candidates being built up in their respective websites, and second, the presence of a feedback option for users, which they deemed essential in candidate websites. On the first preoccupation, this study concludes that voters are very much concerned about a candidate’s image and the manner in which the same is projected on the websites, in comparison to their offline persona. In relation to this, they raised 151 the issue of maintaining credibility and consistency in all forms of media, which as Newman (2006) warns, is a risk especially for a strong leader, if he or she tried to appeal to many segments of the market (Newman, 2006). On opening the lines of communication with users in the websites, the study found this to be critical for respondents, since they equate this with transparency and the credibility of a candidate. Moreover, this is an indication for the audience, that the candidate is knowledgeable about the new media. 7.4 Nature of Local Campaign Websites Last but not the least, on the last research question: “Did the Internet campaigning of Filipino candidates accord with popular trends in Internet campaigning or were there distinct Filipino practices and characteristics? “, it was found that Filipino candidate sites integrate local political realities and western, particularly American, online elements. This study concludes that local campaigns adopted U.S. website components which they found useful in promoting their candidacies, such as the presentation of a comprehensive and dynamic selection of information about their background and career accomplishments, and the organization of their supporters in the case of neophyte politicians. Some websites were cautious in taking up the online aspects that were potentially damaging to their image, such as providing a forum for communication with site visitors. While U.S. candidate websites are typically used for raising funds for the campaign, this feature was likewise not present across all the websites studied. While there were no common set of uniquely Filipino characteristics across the websites examined, one campaign website belonging to a veteran politician played into the patronage- 152 politics that is prevalent in Philippine society by displaying a feature that visitors could access for medical funding assistance. The supplemental role of digital campaigns in the Philippines echoes that of the situation in the U.S., owing to the popularity of traditional media. However, while online electioneering has been observed to have reached yet another critical point in history with the election of Obama into office (AFP, 2008), campaigns of this nature have yet to prove themselves in the Philippines as essential to clinching electoral victory. In drawing parallelisms between the online campaigns of U.S. candidates and Filipino candidates, this study concurs with the observation of scholars that the more vibrant the democratic practice in a nation prior to the introduction of the Internet, the more vibrant its role in fostering political action from opposition parties and other political actors (Kluver and Banerjee, 2005). The rest of this chapter will be broken down into following parts: the next section will discuss the significance of the study and its contribution to the literature on Web campaigns. The following portion will provide a prognosis of online campaigns in the Philippines and state the reasons for such, while the last section will deal with the study limitations as well as suggestions for future studies in this area. 7.5 Significance and Contribution This study is essential to illuminating the sparse body of scholarly work on Web campaigns in the Philippines, by providing two important dimensions that are key to understanding online campaigns. Apart from evaluating the content of campaign sites, this study also examined the perspective of the candidates and their campaign staff, and most importantly, 153 the target audiences of these online efforts as well. The study is more relevant now more than ever because of the heightened activity in cyberspace in the recent election cycle, led by election stakeholders, political parties and candidates, and their continuous incursion in this so-called new political battleground. These attempts deserve closer inspection, as the Internet, especially in a democratic environment like the Philippines, could serve to further enhance our democratic processes. On the one hand, it could level the playing field for political parties and actors who have difficulty competing in the media frenzy that characterizes elections. Just as importantly, campaign websites could provide voters with the essential information about their track record and background that typically gets drowned out in election coverage. For the electorate, online campaigns via candidate websites can have the potential to contribute to voter awareness and education with the wide array of information that could creatively be posted on the site. For this it is worth examining the practice that is growing in popularity in the country, and in the process, cautiously determine the most effective approach of reaching out to audiences on the Internet. This study showed that online campaigns in the country, copied from U.S. Web efforts, are also evolving and slowly manifesting their own unique brand. This in particular should illuminate research in this field of study, by providing not merely comparisons, but relevant insights as to why local candidates purposely stay away from features that typically characterize U.S. campaign sites. For one, Filipino candidates’ calculated decision to exclude features that would enable donations to their campaigns via the websites is attributed to what some politicians describe as the degenerative brand of 154 politics prevailing in the country, where the fear of being set up by their political rivals or gambling lords is a real concern. This reflects in part, the assertion of scholars that technological diffusion and political culture impact on the level of adoption of online campaigns. In line with this concept, this new study claims that the prevailing political culture in a country could have greater influence in shaping a campaign website than the Internet’s diffusion. On the other hand, the under-utilization of the website in terms of building a support network for the campaign was also observed to be a deliberate move on the part of the more senior or veteran candidates in the study, owing to the fact that their longer experience in politics has already provided them a support system that they could activate every campaign season. In demonstrating that the underlying political culture and the level of political maturity and experience are factors for the unique deployment of campaign sites, this study should also be able to shed light on earlier studies which suggested that the quality of candidate websites in the 2004 elections was a result of Filipino candidates’ lack of requisite skills and financial resources. All of these findings suggest a number of things. First is that the underlying political culture, which carries with it the patronage style of politics prevalent in Philippine society evidently manifests itself in the online realm. Second is that while candidates and their respective campaigns are maximizing what the Internet has to offer in promoting themselves to the online community, they need to aggressively market their websites in both the online media as well as the mainstream media. The results also imply that campaigns’ foray into cyberspace need to be organized more carefully, especially in terms of coordinating this with their overall campaign strategy, 155 such that there is a clear and cohesive branding of candidates in both the online and offline realm. There is also a huge potential for the campaign websites to serve as an effective barometer of public perception and opinion that could inform future decisions and actions of the candidate. The responses given by the candidates on their motivations for going online meanwhile indicate that online campaigns are here to stay and show promise for improvement over time. This has positive implications for voter awareness and education in the Philippines, as well as for leveling the playing field for candidates. In the meantime, this study’s findings on what the online audience demand from campaign websites and what turns them off suggest that campaigns possibly need to be structured around various target audiences without compromising the candidate’s integrity and the campaign message. In terms of communication with and among site visitors, the results likewise hint that candidates should be willing to cede some degree of control to them in order to show transparency and credibility. Last but not the least, the findings on the mix of foreign and local traits that characterize Filipino campaign websites signify that candidates will only copy trends that they see fit, in accordance with their specific goals and objectives that are a reflection of their political experience and background. This study has attempted to carry out a mixed approach in arriving at a culturally-specific and marketing-oriented discussion of campaigning via the Internet. This included the formulation of distinct website criteria based on previously-used standards in assessing campaign websites, infused with Webbased marketing principles. This thesis may also serve as a guide for 156 campaign planners in mapping out their online strategy, considering how vital it is to be able to attract and sustain the interest of the online community. 7.6 Projections for Online Campaigns The quality of candidate websites in terms of interactive features and the wide array of information available about the candidates shows promise for e-campaigns in the near future. The websites covered in this study did not exhibit a start-stop nature, where as soon as the candidates were elected into office, the websites became inactive. In fact, all of the websites continued to function and were being updated and improved on as of the writing of this paper. It may very well be because half of the candidates studied already have their sights set on the upcoming 2010 presidential elections. Whether or not candidates believe their campaign websites helped them to clinch victory at the polls, all of them found the websites worthwhile to pursue and to maintain. For candidates, there was nothing to lose and everything to gain from the medium, which more and more Filipinos are getting access to. Aside from the candidates interviewed for this study, many politicians reported to be eyeing the top two posts in the 2010 electoral contest already have functioning websites and using social networking and Twitter including former President Joseph Estrada and Senator Benigno ‘Noynoy’ Aquino III. The historical victory of U.S. President Barack Obama, which was partly attributed to a successful online strategy, is also seen to drive others to copy his campaign’s approach. The participation of a younger and perhaps less traditional generation of leaders who are more technically-informed could also be cause for hope in terms of promoting and elevating the quality of online campaigns in the country. 157 All in all, this would mean that there are more websites competing for audience attention. Thus, online campaigns are projected to improve with time if they are to attract and sustain visitors’ interest in their sites. With candidates’ continued reliance on IT and Web experts, candidate websites are also expected to offer more multimedia elements that will keep audiences interested, keeping in mind that the online market is not a homogenous one, as this study showed. Unless candidates and their Web consultants and designers take the next level by segmenting users and differentiating campaign messages to cater to specific audiences, the campaign website must face up to the challenge of appealing to a wider audience. Because the medium is still new as a campaign tool, and with Internet access becoming available to more segments of the population, newbies online may find the current state of campaign websites acceptable. This is in contrast to the more tech-savvy netizens who look out for particular interactive elements in websites. In terms of encouraging participation among the electorate, it would appear that more and more candidates are seeing the value of acquiring the feedback of users on their websites, without necessarily responding to the messages posted on the site. This may continue to be a trend, because oneway communication is easier to manage than directly engaging with voters and risking losing control. On the other hand, politicians and their staff should be prepared to respond to messages, should they incorporate this feature into their websites. With online campaigns getting the attention of the online community to include bloggers, the online media and non-government organizations, these in turn get exposure from the mainstream media who report the events 158 unfolding in cyberspace, thereby seeping into the consciousness of the wider public. This will encourage the take up of Web campaigning by more political actors and election stakeholders, but this will still not be enough. Campaigns will have to actively promote their websites, in the offline and online realms in order to reach more markets. This study argued that marketing candidates on websites is a very challenging business, made more difficult by the fact that most campaigns only recently used the technology to reach out to voters and without a very good grasp of its potential benefits. There are also inherent problems to consider in practicing political marketing on the Web, such as the ‘pull’ nature of the technology, as opposed to television’s ‘push’ technology (Bowers-Brown, 2003). This means that online campaigns depend on the public to actively seek out websites, rather than being passively open to receiving broadcast and online political ads of candidates. There is also the problem of the digital divide that needs to be addressed in the country, because citizens would not be able to access online content without Internet access. 7.7 Limitations and Directions for Future Research While this study collected a varied pool of data as a result of a multi- method approach in examining the quality of candidate websites and the perceptions of both candidates and voters, there were technical limitations that the researcher faced in the conduct of this research. The transient nature of websites proved to be a difficult situation to monitor. For example, Trillanes’ site changed at least twice within a period of one year. In such cases, previously-taken screen shots of the sites had to be shown to focus group participants so they could see how the site appeared during the campaign. This was done before the participants were asked to navigate the current sites, 159 since all six websites were still active even after the elections, with some minor changes. The focus groups were likewise imperfect as these were conducted at various stages of the campaign and election period, affecting to an extent how the participants viewed the candidate websites. Likewise, the pre-selection of the websites by the researcher meant that the evaluation of the websites in this study, particularly on the aspect of delivering and attracting was assessed by her, instead of asking the participants to independently search for candidate websites. Thus, readers are advised to read the conclusions of this study with caution. This study, while undertaken within a specific political, historical and technological context is but a piece of a puzzle or at best, a snapshot of online campaigns in the Philippines. Online campaigns may just be gaining momentum in the country, but it would be useful to track the evolution of the practice from its humble beginnings up through this decade, where there are more documented material on the subject. In this light, scholars interested in this area of research should not miss the opportunity of monitoring the next round of election campaigns on the Web, before, during and after the 2010 presidential elections in particular. Future studies should also examine the whole gamut of online activities politicians are sure to engage in, and go beyond scrutinizing campaign websites. The interplay between candidates, political parties, interest groups such as election watchdogs, and even the online media also deserve scholarly inspection. 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Were you aware of other candidates’ online campaigns? (whether abroad or local?) If so how did this affect your overall campaign strategy? 5. Is your official website the work of your Senate staff or was there outside help involved? (design, concept and content wise). 6. Why are you maintaining your site after the campaign period? 7. Why do you think it’s important to have a presence in cyberspace? 8. How has online campaigning helped your campaign? 171 Appendix B Interview Guide for Focus Group Discussion: 1. Please go the following website (any of the 6 official candidate websites) and navigate the site. Have you ever visited this/these sites? Did you hear about the existence of these sites before and during the elections? 2. Please click on the various features of the website and answer the following questions. Describe the general layout of the website. How do you find the site in terms of attracting and sustaining the interest of visitors to the site? 3. What immediately catches your attention in a particular site? 4. Is it easy to navigate the site? How slow or how fast can you access the different features (e.g. downloading a music video or speech)? 5. As a voter, what would you like to see in a candidate’s website? What features are not necessary or unpleasant/distracting in a candidate website? 6. How do you think can this candidate website be further improved? 7. What are your perceptions of this candidate after viewing his site? 8. If you were invited to join this candidate’s campaign team after viewing his site, what would your likely response be? 172 Appendix C Contents of campaign websites by candidate Function Informing Indicators Escudero Trillanes Pangilinan Angara Villar Arroyo Biography/Milestones/CV X X X O X X O O X X X X X X O O O O X X X O x x x o x X X O X X X X X X x x x x x x x x x x x x x x o x o x X O X X O O X X x x o o X X O X x o o o x o x o Issue Positions Campaign News Speech Texts Legislative Agenda Programs and Projects Party Affiliation Newsletter Photos of Campaign Events Campaign Ads Online Events (Podcast) RSS Feeds Blog 13 Participating 9 Volunteer Sign-up Become a member E-mail list Sign-up Donation Information SMS/Mobile Phone Contact Information Visitor Comments E-forum/Tagboard Offline Distribution of Materials Online Polls X X O O O X X X X X 10 Linking 7 X X O O O X X O X X 7 Send Links Link to other sites O X 9 x x o o x x x o x o 6 O X 11 O O X O O X X O O X 6 x x 10 o o x o o x o o o o 4 O X 9 o o o o o o o o x o 2 o o 1 o o 2 1 1 2 1 0 0 TOTAL = 25 17 14 17 16 12 10 173 [...]... focuses on the personality traits of the candidates, their sensational statements against each other, their perceived standings, and the trends in the race or match based on the opinions of pundits and formal and informal surveys (Coronel, 2004) The commercialization of the media, which makes it imperative for newspapers and broadcast stations alike to make a profit or to rate well, is one reason for the. .. members of the political opposition Given this global perspective which includes a background on the Philippine political system and campaign environment, the profile of Internet and mobile phone penetration and their users, the following chapter will undertake a review of the related literature on Web campaigns, covering the various issues and concepts that have occupied scholars since the emergence of. .. coverage since their foray in online reporting during the 2001 and 2004 elections, while socio-civic groups formed their own election-monitoring sites and related news portals contributed to voter education for the 2007 polls Election propaganda, on the other hand, is allowed on television, cable television, radio, newspapers or any other medium, subject to the allowed expenses of candidates and parties... explained by one local study which examined the online political sphere in the 2004 presidential elections, which suggested that the lack of laws regulating online campaigns was one of the reasons for candidates utilization of the technology (Cuevas, 2004) 1.9 Chapter Summary In reviewing the evolution and quality of online campaigns from western societies to some Asia Pacific nations including the Philippines,... percent of the consumers’ consumption” and that “connectivity to other Asia-Pacific countries is a small fraction compared to the U.S connection.” Table 1 Statistical Data on the Philippines % of Total Population Source Internet Penetration 15.1% (as of 2007) ITU Mobile Phone Penetration 45% (as of 2006) Dow Jones News wires Text Messaging 250 million SMS/day National Statistical and Coordination Board... system of governance is best for him (Carlos and Banlaoi, 1996) The EDSA or People Power Revolution of 1986 resulted in the ouster for Marcos, the collapse of his dominant political party and the installation of Aquino as president of the Philippines, whose revolutionary government laid the foundation for the 1987 Philippine Constitution (Tancangco, 1988) This constitution also paved the way for the emergence... Anti-Arroyo candidates consistently led in surveys conducted by the local polling stations, with administration candidates trailing from midway up to the last stretch of the campaign period (www.pulseasia.com.ph) From the official list of the twelve winning senatorial candidates, seven were from the opposition who occupied the top 6 slots, while three candidates were elected from the administration party,... Internet and its use as a political tool in the country It will also examine the diffusion of the technology and the profile of Internet users in the country Such information will provide the reader with a better grasp of the socio-political environment in which cyber- campaigning in the Philippines is taking place 1.7.1 Background and History In the Philippines, Web campaigning might still be considered... several themes can be culled First, that the quality of online campaigns are dependent on several factors that include the kind of political system prevailing in a country, the duration of the campaign period, existing regulation or lack thereof covering online campaigns, as well as the stage or level of development of the Internet at a particular point in time Second, political parties and candidates. .. attention is given to the platforms of the candidates and their positions on social issues (Coronel, 2004:58) This can be illuminated by the observation that the media tend to reflect the class interests of their owners, advertisers and readers (McCargo, 2003) For the rural poor, however, it is not the media nor the church who are considered influential, but the family and the political party Furthermore, ... reliability and validity of data results The responses of the candidates and their campaign staff provided illuminating data on the second research question on what explains their unique adoption of campaign. .. where the coverage focuses on the personality traits of the candidates, their sensational statements against each other, their perceived standings, and the trends in the race or match based on the. .. visitors and gave them a sense of control over access to information as well as of the campaign dialogue One other advantage of marketing candidates on websites is that candidates can widen their