Party Website Use among Spanish Party Members

The past decades have demonstrated the relevance of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) not only in daily life activities but also in political participation (e.g., signing an online petition, e-voting). Political parties have been no exception to the influence of these technologies and have incorporated them in their own practices (Gibson et al 2017; Gauja 2017, 2015). From campaigning to intra-organizational matters, political parties make use of these ICTs, developing e-platforms to spread their messages and manage their own internal affairs. Indeed, parties use their own websites not only to promote campaign messages, sponsor candidates or vote for internal party matters but also to inform their members about relevant political issues. The latter can help to improve their members understanding of politics and persuade them to adopt positions closer to the party position. Certainly, political parties have always been an important political cue for citizens to simplify the complexity of politics. Party websites can be a very effective tool to promote political information cues to their members, especially in the context of growing sources of information and the spread of fake-news. This has important consequences for political parties. For instance, it could boost party coherence in different political issues or favour internal coherence and silence critical voices. This paper will analyse comparatively the extent to which party members use their party website as the main source of political information. Concretely, we aim to identify the individual and party factors that enhance a higher or lower use, and their change over time using survey data from Spanish political parties.