Candidate Campaign Blogs

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Abstract
Blogs, Web pages that are frequently updated with posts arranged so the most recent post is at the top of the page, were widely adopted by candidates in the 2004 campaign. These online tools that are popular with young voters, though widely adopted as a “hip” technology, fell short of successfully targeting young voters. This content analysis found only 8% of all campaign posts on the official major-party candidate Web sites targeted youth (N = 106). Although Bush published fewer posts overall, he produced more youth-targeted posts than Kerry. The topics of posts, issues, and message strategies used in youth-targeted posts were analyzed. Additionally, the use of images was explored. The article concludes that campaigns failed to fully employ blogs as a strategic tool to reach out to young voters.