  The early election call in the fall of 2000 provided the perfect opportunity
to study the impact the Internet has had on election campaigning in Canada.
With the explosion of use the Net has seen since the 1997 general election,
Canadian federal parties stood at the threshold of a new age in election
campaigning. Pundits such as Rheingold (1993) have argued that the Internet
will provide citizens with a way to bypass traditional media and gain
unmediated access to each parties political message as well as providing a
forum for citizens to engage the parties, and each other in deliberative
debate.
  Through a longitudinal analysis of party web pages and telephone interviews
with party staffers, we analyze the role the Internet played in the election
campaigns of Canada's federal parties. Our findings indicate that the parties
are still focusing on providing online features that talk at the voter instead
of engaging them in any type of meaningful discourse. Most of these sites were
exceptionally similar in their structure and in the type of content they
provided. Generally, these sites served as digital archives for campaign
material created with other media in mind and despite the multimedia
capabilities of the Internet, these sites tended to be overwhelmingly text
oriented. In line with Stromer-Galley's (2000) discussion of why candidates in
the U.S. avoid online interaction, we also argue that little incentive exists
to motivate parties to engage in any meaningful interaction with voters online.
