Collaborative Research: Using Web Data to Study U.S. Congressional Campaigns and Representation

竞选活动是民主政治的一个显著特征。然而，研究竞选活动及其影响一直很困难。在最近的工作中，调查人员开发了一种竞选沟通理论，并利用竞选活动和成员官方网站的数据测试了人们的期望。在两项国家科学基金会合作基金（SES-0822819, SES-0822782, SES-1024079, SES-1023291, SES-1022902）的支持下，研究人员从2002年到2010年收集了超过1500个网站编码的数据集。这些数据为研究竞选活动及其影响提供了前所未有的机会。调查人员将扩大他们的数据收集范围，包括2012年的竞选活动以及2011年和2013年的立法会议。他们将在活动过程中对网站进行编码，存档网站，对网站设计师进行调查，并在活动大约一年后对官方成员网站进行编码。他们还将征求对编码方案的输入，以包括其他学者感兴趣的特征，这些学者可以将这些数据用于自己的研究。将数据扩展到2012年的选举（以及2011年和2013年的立法会议）是至关重要的，原因有很多：党派关系与该项目过去几年的情况不同；2012年新国会议员的加入引发了一些有趣的问题：路径依赖，以及政党在影响非传统竞选活动参与者行为方面的力量；公众对技术的期望越来越高，这可能会刺激网站上基本技术使用的增加。最后，调查人员将构建一个公开可用的数据集，其中包括超过12个时间点的大约1900个竞选网站和大约300个官方成员网站的编码。这个项目具有明显的智力价值。这些数据将使学者们能够追踪互联网随时间的演变，并测试竞选和代表的理论。与电视广告和辩论等其他无中介的竞选传播渠道不同，几乎所有候选人都有竞选网站，所有代表都有官方网站。这允许对候选人和成员的代表性样本进行分析，而不是有偏见的样本。网站还使政治家们能够全面展示他们的行为，而不是简短的录音片段或精选的点名投票。该项目还产生了更广泛的影响。从这些数据中产生的见解可以改善活动和代表性。该项目将涉及学生，他们将学习如何进行研究，并能够在自己的工作中使用数据。最后，该项目独特地汇集了民主政治三个关键组成部分的数据：竞选、投票和代表权。

Electoral campaigns are a defining feature of democratic polities. Yet studying electoral campaigns and their effects has been difficult. In recent work, the investigators have developed a theory of campaign communication and tested expectations using data from campaigns' and members' official websites. With the support of two collaborative National Science Foundation grants (SES-0822819, SES-0822782, and SES-1024079, SES-1023291, SES-1022902), the investigators have amassed a data set consisting of more than 1,500 website codings, from 2002 through 2010. These data offer unprecedented opportunities to study campaigns and their effects. The investigators will extend their data collection to include the 2012 campaign and the 2011 and 2013 legislative sessions. They will code sites over the course of the campaign, archive sites, implement a survey of website designers, and code official member websites approximately one year after the campaigns. They also will solicit input on the coding scheme to include features that interest other scholars who can then use the data for their own research. Extending the data to include the 2012 election (and the 2011 and 2013 legislative sessions) is critical for various reasons: partisanship differs from what it has been in past years of the project; the infusion of new members of Congress in 2012 raises intriguing questions about path dependency and the power of parties in affecting behaviors of those who ran untraditional campaigns; and the increasingly technological expectations of the public may stimulate an increase in what has been rudimentary technical usage on websites. In the end, the investigators will construct a publicly available data set that includes coding of approximately 1,900 campaign websites and roughly 300 official member websites, over twelve points in time. The project has clear intellectual merit. The data will enable scholars to track the evolution of the Internet over time and test theories of campaigns and representation. Unlike other unmediated sources of campaign communication, such as television advertisements and debates, virtually all candidates launch campaign websites and all representatives have official websites. This allows for analyses on a representative sample of candidates and members, rather than a biased sample. Websites also enable politicians to present a holistic picture of their behaviors rather than short sound bites or selected roll call votes. The project also produces broader impacts. Insights generated from these data could improve campaigns and representation. The project will involve students who will learn how to conduct research and be able to use the data in their own work. In the end, the project uniquely brings together data on three key components of democratic polities: campaigns, voting, and representation.