Understanding and Comparing E-Campaigning Utilisation in the 2008 New Zealand General Election

Varying and incommensurable e-Campaigning utilisation frameworks are available in scholarly literature, leading to substantial problems around the comparability, reliability, and robustness of e-Campaigning research across political parties, candidates, elections and electoral systems. This paper proposes a uniform, campaign-focused and technology-enabled conceptual framework for a more systematic and comparative understanding of the breadth and depth of e-Campaigning utilisation. The framework is applied to empirically describe, analyse and compare the extent of e-Campaigning utilisation by the two major political parties involved in the 2008 New Zealand General Election, namely the National Party and the Labour Party.