Abstract Steve WARD

Steve WARD (University of Salford): « Party organisational change and the Internet in the UK: The growth of a virtual grassroots? ».

The rise of newer user-driven ‘web 2.0’ technologies such as blogs, social networking sites and video sharing tools has raised new possibilities and challenges for party activism and organization. As well as offering new means for parties to organize their supporters and activists, these applications also stimulate the growth of unofficial groups and networks which are loosely aligned with party politics but are not under their control. The paper looks at one particular aspect of these developments – the emergence of unofficial party blogs sites and networks in the UK. In particular, we examine three of the largest such blogs: Conservative Home (CH), Labour List (LL) and Liberal Democrat Voice (LDV), all of which have been developed since 2005 and all of which to a greater, or lesser, degree claim to seek to represent grassroots voices within the parties. We examine them in regard to five basic questions: (1) what are the origins and main purposes of the sites? (2) what type of content do they contain and who provides this content? (is dissent and criticism of the party promoted?); (3) how wide is the reach of these sites in the WWW and who forms the audience? (4) what is the nature of online networks that these sites occupy and how integrated are they with those surrounding their respective official party sites; and finally (5) to what extent do elections and party incumbency affect these sites content, visibility and online networks. How far did the 2010 campaign and subsequent government change in the UK make a difference to the way these blogs operate? In addressing these questions the research also seeks to assess the wider impact of these sites on intra-party organisational coherence and wider questions of possible future decline or renewal of parties. To what extent do these new party spaces challenge or support parties’ current model of operation in the UK and their message/leadership? Do they enjoy a higher profile than their official counterparts and siphon supporters away from party politics ‘as usual’, setting up the possibility for a more fluid, open and non-membership based version?