Perusing Candidate Web Sites: The Effects of Viewing Selected Content on Candidate Reports

*  Jason Lee Rittenberg (Univ of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)

*  David Tewksbury (Univ of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)

Abstract:

The Internet plays an important role in political campaigns, but little is known about the effects of citizen exposure to candidate web sites. This experiment tests whether time spent with policy, background, and campaign information on web sites predicts voters' self-perceived knowledge and evaluations of candidates, and the confidence with which they express their evaluations. The analyses suggest that campaign sites can affect what people think they know about candidates and how they evaluate them.