Web-based citizen engagement in the 2004 Australian federal election

Studies on the use of internet in the Australian political arena indicate that the site producer, rather than the user, is the benefactor of internet technology. Traditionally, the use of the internet in Australian state and territory elections has been, in the words of Gibson and Ward "top-down information provision" (2003:140). Political websites were primarily an "adjunct to existing communication devices," offering limited interactive experiences (2003: 140-141). During the 2004 Australian federal election, however, this study reveals that political websites were as likely to provide features facilitating public engagement as they were to provide political information, suggesting that the internet is closing the gap on what Putman (2000) calls the "civic deficit." In this chapter, we first examine the extent to which the internet, as it was deployed during the 2004 Australian federal election, is changing from a top-down provision of an information model towards one in which webbased citizen engagement is facilitated. Following this analysis, we take a close look at three websites that fostered public engagement in the 2004 Australian federal election - a political party, a media institution, and a citizen website. We also look beyond the definition of "e-democracy" as the privilege of the site producer alone, investigating the potential for the internet to enhance cyber-citizenship through enhanced user participation in the electoral process