European elections in the Italian web sphere: campaigning 2.0?

Mascheroni, Giovanna ; Minucci, Sara

1. Introduction

During the 2008 presidential campaign in the United States, more than half the population (and three quarters of internet users) went online to get news on the campaign, and 59% of internet users received and shared information on the campaign and political messages via email, social network sites (SNS), instant messaging and SMS (51). Although a systematic investigation of "online political users" and their practices during election campaigns is still lacking in the Italian context, nonetheless there are signs of a growing relevance of the internet as a source of political information, and of social network sites as a place for sharing political messages and mobilizing offline activities. As regards political information, according to a recent survey on news media consumption, 34.7% of the entire population (58.9% of those aged 15-24, and 60.2% of those aged 25-34 years old) trusts the internet as the most independent source of information (52). Meanwhile, political uses of social network sites are also increasing, as the case of the No-B Day has recently shown (53).

These practices are part of the emerging "convergence culture" (54) which is significantly altering the boundaries between the production and consumption of media content: thanks to the applications usually labelled as "web 2.0" and characterised by an "architecture of participation" (55), users are increasingly co-producers or "produsers"56 in that they tend to share, manipulate and re-assemble media content, or produce a consistent amount of user generated content (UGC) online. These grassroots practices are changing audiences' relationships not only with cultural industries and their products, but also with politics and traditional social institutions (57).

For politicians, web 2.0 and social media represent a further public space to disseminate their political messages and to reach the dispersed audiences: since the last presidential campaign in the U.S. a vast array of candidates and politicians in Western democracies have opened a profile in Facebook or Twitter and have incorporated web 2.0 tools in their websites. At the same time, nonetheless, these new media pose some challenges to the traditional styles and patterns of political communication. As some recent studies on the use of web 2.0 by political parties in European countries point out (58), what is under threat is precisely the control over the flow of information traditionally held by parties or candidates in their top-down communication process.

Drawing on the robust literature on the use of new technologies during election campaigns (59), and having its roots in the field of internet studies, this article aims to provide a picture of the electoral web sphere surrounding the 2009 European elections campaign. To answer this question, we investigated two related aspects of the relationship between social media and politics: on the one hand we provided an analysis of the online presence of candidates from the main parties and coalitions running for a seat in the European Parliament; on the other we mapped the social discourses around the campaign issues and political messages concerning the EP elections which were disseminated in social media, and especially on Facebook. The choice to focus on Facebook is stems from its wide adoption by Italian internet users: this social network site, the most popular in Italy, has grown exponentially in 2008, increasing its community from the 216,000 registered users at the end of January 2008 to the 10,047,580 members at June 2009 (60).

Candidates' websites and blogs have been monitored during the campaign (from the end of April to the first half of June) and then again between September and October, in order to distinguish among still active sites, inactive ones and those no longer online (61). We analysed the websites produced by political candidates for the EP elections following--and adapting to the Italian electoral system and campaign context--the features which Xenos and Foot (62) recognize as distinctive of a "web campaigning activity" as opposed to a more traditional online transposition of offline campaigning tools and practices. The authors identify some specific features of political candidates' online communication that manifest a deeper understanding of the web and a more sophisticated use of its potentials, while a variety of online campaigning activities represent still a mere adaptation of traditional campaigning to the web environment63. Analysing and comparing how Italian candidates use the web and adopt web 2.0 tools leads to identify a continuum of political websites according to their degree of interactivity--and the degree of users' participation to the production of content that the sites affords--and multimediality--the extent to which they combine textual and audiovisual materials to form a multimodal communication.

Facebook data were identified on the basis of a search through the descriptor "European elections 2009" and monitored during a three month period (March--June 2009). The data collected consisted of Facebook groups, causes and events (64), and were analysed combining quantitative and qualitative analysis in order to draw a comprehensive picture of the representation of the campaign in Facebook. Our goal was to identify the issues, actors and voices represented, the relationship between issues debated online and those in the media agenda, and the involvement of Italian citizens in the EP elections.

2. The 2009 European Election in Italy: an overview

Italian citizens voted for electing the 72 Italian new members of the European Parliament (MEPs) the 6th and 7th of June. The electoral law foresees a proportional method with the possibility of indicating candidates' names (the number of possible preferences is different among the five Italian electoral districts) and it also indicates the minimum percentage of vote (4%) necessary to a party to elect its candidates.

Only five parties obtained more than 4% of votes: Popolo della Liberta (PdL, the centre-right party of the Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi) 35.2%--26 elected candidates--Partito Democratico (PD, the main centre-left party) 26.1%--21 elected MEPs--Lega Nord (LN, the right party that governs together with PdL) 10.2 %--9 elected candidates--Italia dei Valori (IdV, the single issue party manly focused on justice that is part of the opposition to the Government) 8%--7 elected candidates--and Unione di Centro (Udc, the Catholic centre wing party opposing the Government) 6.51%--5 elected MPs.

In our study we analysed also three other parties: Rifondazione Comunista (65) (RC, the main left wing party, not represented in the Italian Parliament) 3,3%, Sinistra e Liberta (SeL, a left wing party, born from formerly Rifondazione Comunista, Comunisti Italiani, Verdi--the Green party--and left Pd members) 3,1%, Lista Bonino-Pannella (the Radical Party) 2,4%.

The analysis of the online presence of candidates in the 2009 European election shows a scarce use of the Internet: a result that Italian candidates share with Italian and foreigners parties studied in previous works (66). Nonetheless, there is a growth in comparison to the last European election in 2004, when only the 19.7% of the candidates were online (67).

The low online presence of candidates is not homogeneous across different parties. This confirms, on the one hand, that parties which were already more present online68 are still the most represented on the Internet and so have a greater familiarity with the medium. This results in a kind of "political digital divide" among parties, already pointed out in other studies (69). On the other hand, our findings demonstrate that the relationship politicians have with the web still fits a traditional model of political communication, mainly focused on a top-down unidirectional diffusion of contents (70). Furthermore, the resistance, or scarcity, of direct interaction with the public is also confirmed by the infrequent use of blogs.

The same communicative model persists when looking at the adoption of "web campaigning" tools. As a matter of fact there is a gap between a minority of candidates who use a variety of resources in a synergic and sophisticated and a majority of them who incorporate in their sites some web 2.0 tools and use them in a superficial way. In our sample, the most common tools of "web campaigning" are the presence of links to external sites different from the one of the candidate's party and the availability of audiovisual material (used in 63.7% of sites and blogs), the link to the party's web site (61.6%), the link to the candidate's profile on two of the most famous SNS, Facebook and Twitter (52.3%). This is an interesting element because it remarks the importance the SNS gained in a short period of time even among politicians. Nonetheless their use seems to be in relation with the need of creating the illusion of a closeness with citizens: in fact, only 9.28% of candidates fully exploits the capabilities of SNS to spread messages in a viral way by introducing the possibility of linking sites' or blogs' contents to visitors' pages on Facebook and Twitter. Also the chance of branding other web pages with candidate's promotional materials--that is part of the same viral diffusion mechanisms typical of the online "world of mouth"--is scarcely used (7.1%).

The "web campaign" is mostly used by PD's candidates and, in a short distance, by those of IdV, while these tools are less common among PdL's candidates. This result makes possible to hypothesize, at least in the case of PD, the existence of a centralized strategy in the candidates' use of the Internet. The IdV's performance on the web can be explained also by the "historical" online presence of its leader.

In evaluating the PdL's online campaign it is important to point out that, since the party is characterised by a strong and well identified leadership, it has a strong interest in concentrating attention on its leader. In fact, Silvio Berlusconi does not have a personal web site since it coincides with the PdL's site, but his name is present in a number of official fandom sites that echo the party line (72).

Finally, by analysing the distribution of the use of the web 2.0 among parties, we see that the most active candidates in online campaigning are those who already are the best known nationally: thus they reinforce their popularity also by using the Internet.

4. The discourses on the European Elections campaign in web 2.0

During the three month period of our monitoring, from the beginning of March to June the 7th, 410 groups concerning the European elections were born in Facebook: the vast majority (265 groups) were minor groups, counting less than one hundred members; 130 groups' users were in between one hundred and one thousand; and only 22 groups could count on more than one thousand members. The above table shows the main categories of groups, with groups supporting single candidates and those debating single issues prevailing over groups campaigning for political parties or political movements (73). The remaining 72 groups were parodist or offensive groups, while others were only partially related to EP elections (74). The emerging picture, then, is that of a high fragmentation of the discourses related to the EP elections in a variety of groups and themes. A deeper analysis, nonetheless, highlights how the greater participation--that is the number of members joining groups--and the majority of groups deal with a few specific issues.

The topics and actors represented in the single issue groups challenge the idea of social media as constituting an 'alternative' public sphere: indeed, the most discussed issues largely reproduce the media agenda in the weeks before elections. The largest groups, respectively the first (European Elections + Referendum: against waste (75)) and the third (Join elections and referendum on 6-7 June/let's save 400 million euros!76), counting 19,081 and 11,611 members, were born just immediately after the earthquake in Abruzzo on April 6th to promote an election day which combined European elections, local elections and a referendum to devolve the conspicuous sum that could be saved for the reconstruction of L'Aquila and its surroundings. The earthquake represented a turning point in the discussions on the electoral campaign both offline and online.

A second major issue is represented by the controversial candidacy of the Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who chose to run for the European Parliament (EP) as leader of the PdL in spite of his institutional role. This choice produced a split in public opinion, divided among those supporting and those against his candidacy. On Facebook the opponents prevailed, with the group "we are not going to vote for Berlusconi at the European Elections" (77) growing exponentially from 232 members registered in the first week of April to the 11,961 participants by June 7th and taking second place among the most popular groups, and the group "Those who will NOT vote for Silvio at next European elections" (78) counting 3,904 members and being the seventh most populated group. Also popular was the quest for legality and opposition to political corruption, embodied in the groups in support of De Magistris79 or Rita Borsellino's (80) candidacies; in groups against the candidacy of convicted or investigated politicians; and in the "meta-group" gathering all groups in support of Marco Travaglio (81). Overall, these data are consistent with much of the research on EP election campaigns (82_, underscoring how the main focus in both the campaign and its media coverage tends to be on national issues, or on European issues framed in a national perspective. Once again this deadline has proven to be a pretext to continue discussion of national issues and to assess the popularity of the government.

Turning to the other two main typologies of groups, as in mainstream media, so in Facebook, the activity of campaigning in support of single candidacies or political parties gained visibility only in May. Among these more campaign-oriented groups, we can note a stronger success achieved by radical left-wing parties and extreme right-wing parties: the official group of Sinistra e Liberta reached 9,511 members, and the group supporting the Lista comunista e anticapitalista (PRC and PDCI) 4,570 members, while the group invoking a single extreme right list declined in popularity during the monitoring, stopping at 2,356. This means that minor and extra-parliamentary parties, and minor political orientations, were overrepresented compared to PdL, Pd, Lega Nord and Idv, whose candidates won a seat in the European Parliament. Therefore, the higher visibility and participation gained by the above mentioned groups suggests that Facebook users, at least those interested in the EP campaign, tended to clump around either the 'radical left' or the 'radical right' pole. These findings are consistent with studies on the representation of different political orientations in the blogosphere, which highlight the political polarization of internet political users, or, alternatively, the social media's potential for reinforcing preexisting political polarization (83).

Regarding single candidates' campaigning, as already mentioned, strong visibility was reached by Rita Borsellino and De Magistris. Candidates from Pd and Pdl were also well represented, as were candidates from Lega Nord and UDC, perhaps balancing their otherwise low effort in "institutional" web campaigning with profiles and groups in Facebook. This use of social network sites by otherwise invisible candidates, and the low membership their supporting groups reach--usually under one hundred members also suggest that in political communication, as well as in interpersonal relationships, social network sites tend to be used to communicate with one's extended social network, that is people with whom someone has an offline connection (84). These groups are strongly localized, thus enabling local candidates, who have limited, if any, visibility at the national level and in mainstream media, to manage a low-cost, highly personalized campaign. In this respect, the use of social media balances the trend of previous electoral campaigns, which have been deeply de-territorialized and centralized in recent years due to the transformations of the Italian electoral system and political communication (85), by re-localizing them. This is one side of the potential "e-ruption" (86) enabled by the adoption of web 2.0 in political communication: a potentially disruptive effect in that it undermines the centralization of parties' campaigning activities, coordinated and organized at a national level, while giving back to single candidates the management of a localized and personalized campaign now conducted both online and offline.

5. Conclusive remarks

The European elections campaign in Italy has been characterised by a persisting divide, at both a quantitative and qualitative level, among political candidates and parties in their use of the web. Nonetheless, this campaign has also witnessed a strong popularity of social media tools, especially Facebook profiles, among candidates' online activities.

The adoption of new media doesn't imply, per se, more efficient communication nor improved or transformed campaigning communicative models (87). Web 2.0 main features--namely the convergence of production and consumption, and the emerging participatory culture (88)--are visibly conflicting with a traditional political communication model understood as a top-down one-way flow of information. Web 2.0 has the potential to radically change this well-established model at least along two lines: vertically, in that it creates a two-way flow of communication where citizens are empowered and become co-producers of content; and horizontally, in the management of the campaign activity, in that national organizations abdicate control and management of the campaign to local party branches. Considering these two potential disruptive impacts of social media on political communication, the monitoring of European elections online in Italy provides some evidence of the use of web 2.0 as a tool for re-localizing campaign and empowering less visible, local political candidates. As far as communication among political actors and citizens is concerned, instead, we can observe a persisting gap of interactivity and participation when comparing the online communication strategies produced by candidates and the grassroots practices that social media users usually engage in. As Coleman and Blumler put it, "one of the most common mistakes made by top-down political leaders is to imagine online communication as a form of broadcasting" (89). Candidates seem to strategically adopt and adapt web 2.0 infrastructure and tools, without losing control over the communication flow: what emerges is a hybrid online presence, which has been successfully labelled as "web 1.5" (90). Web 1.5 refers to the "extensive use of the architecture of participation, but much less use of the community's democratic structure" (91).

Looking at the EP elections' representation in Facebook, we have seen that groups tend to replicate online the key issues of the campaign offline--and its coverage in mainstream media--and to mobilize participation only in relation to domestic problems. Besides the persistent use of the campaign as a pretext to discuss national issues, the analysis of Facebook groups reveals another characteristic of the "second-order" (92) nature of the European elections: the limited involvement of citizens, reflected in the low number of members who joined these groups, when compared to other online mobilization (93).

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Giovanna Mascheroni

University of Torino

Sara Minucci

University of Torino

(50) An earlier version of the part on social media has been presented by Giovanna Mascheroni at the ESA Conference in Lisbon, ISCTE University, 2-5 September 2009. A partial version of this article will be published in a monographic issue on European elections in ComPol (Comunicazione Politica). The work has been shared by the two authors in any part. Anyway, Giovanna Mascheroni is responsible for par. 1, 4, and 5; Sara Minucci for par. 2 and 3.

(51) Aaron Smith, The Internet's Role in Campaign 2008, (Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2009) [report online]; available at www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/ 6-The-Internets-Role-in-Campaign-2008.aspx

(52) Demos & Pi, XXIII Osservatorio sul Capitale Sociale degli Italiani. Gli italiani e l'informazione (Demos & Pi, 2009) [report online]; available at ww.demos.it/a00355.php

(53) No-B Day (No Berlusconi Day) was a demonstration organized by a group of bloggers through a Facebook group (called "Una manifestazione nazionale per chiedere le dimissioni di Berlusconi" and counting 370.519 members) and a website (www.noberlusconiday.org). It originated against the Prime Minister's attempts to pass laws giving himself (and some other top Italian officials) immunity from prosecution, and called for Berlusconi's resignation. The demonstration, which took place in several Italian cities and abroad on December 5th 2009, mobilized around one million people (350.000 only in Rome), gave rise to the so-called Purple Movement, still active in the defence of the Italian Constitution, and in reporting the Prime Minister's involvement in several trials.

(54) Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, (New York: NYU Press, 2006).

(55) Tim O'Reilly, What is web 2.0? Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software, 2005, available at: http://oreilly.com/pub/a/web2/ archive/what-is-web-20.html?page=1.

(56) Alex Bruns, Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage (New York: Peter Lang, 2008).

(57) Jenkins, Convergence Culture.

(58) See: Oyvind Kalnes, "Norwegian parties and web 2.0", Journal of information technologies and politics, 6 (3-4), (2009): 251-266; Nigel A. Jackson and Darren G. Lilleker, "Building an architecture of participation? Political parties and web 2.0 in Britain", Journal of information technologies and politics, 6 (3-4), (2009): 232-250; Thomas Zittel, "Lost in technology? Political parties and the online campaigns of consitutency candidates in Germany's mixed member electoral system", Journal of information technologies and politics, 6 (3-4), (2009): 298-311

(59) For the use of the web by Italian political parties and candidates see: Sara Bentivegna, Campagne elettorali in rete (Bari: Laterza, 2006). For the parties' web strategies in European elections see: Warner Lusoli, "The Internet and the European Parliament elections: Theoretical perspectives, empirical investigations and proposals for research", Information Polity, 10 (3-4), (2005): 153-163 and Nicholas W. Jankowski, Kirsten Foot, Randy Kluver and Steve Schneider, "The Web and the 2004 EP election: Comparing political actor Web sites in 11 EU Member States", Information Polity, 10 (3-4), (2005): 165-176. For the role of the Internet in the U.S: campaigns see: Bruce Bimber, Richard Davies, Campaigning Online: The Internet in U.S. Elections (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) and Robert Denton, The 2008 Presidential Campaign: A Communication Perspective (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009).

(60) The Facebook community is still growing: it reached 12,450,000 members at the end of October, half of the internet population in Italy. These data are provided by Facebook ads.

(61) The final sample includes both active and inactive websites and blogs, with the exception of those which have been deactivated after summer 2009.

(62) Michael Xenos and Kirsten Foot, "Not your father's internet: the generation gap in online politics", in Civic Life Online. Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth, ed. Lance W. Bennett, (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2007). 51-70.

(63) Michael Xenos and Kirsten Foot, "Not your father's internet", 58.

(64) We will focus here on Facebook groups, since events primarily promoted offline campaigns activities, while causes were only 16, poorly supported, and largely overlapped with the most debated issues in groups.

(65) In 2009 European Election Rifondazione Comunista was part of a coalition in which there were also two other left wing parties, Sinistra Europea (European Left) and Comunisti Italiani (Italian Comunists).

(66) Sara Bentivegna, , Campagne elettorali; Michael Xenos and Kirsten Foot, "Not your father's Internet"; Cristian Vaccari, "Internet e partecipazione politica nella elezioni italiane e francesi", Partecipazione e conflitto 1 (2009): 43-68.; Nigel Jackson and Darren Lilleker, "Building an architecture of participation?"; Thomas Zittel, "Lost in technology? Political parties and the online campaigns of constituency candidates in Germany's mixed member electoral system", Journal of information technology and politics 6 (2009): 298-311.

(67) Sara Bentivegna, Campagne elettorali: 14.

(68) Sara Bentivegna, Campagne elettorali.

(69) Michael Margolis and David Resnick, Politics as Usual: The "Cyberspace Revolution" (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications 2000) quoted in Sara Bentivegna, Campagne elettorali: 45

(70) Nigel Jackson and Darren Lilleker, "Building an architecture of participation?"; Cristian Vaccari, "Internet e partecipazione".

(71) The coding table included more aspects and features of candidates' websites, but we preferred to focus here only on those related to web 2.0 and the level of participation afforded to users. For more information on the database, please write the authors.

(72) Such examples are www.silvioberlusconifanclub.org and www.forzasilvio.it. The community www.forzasilvio.it had regular and intense activity during the electoral campaign. After the campaign, activity became more sporadic and linked to critical political moments such as the failure of Lodo Alfano (the law to guarantee immunity to the four most important offices of the State, including the Prime Minister) by the Constitutional Court (October 6th, 2009) and the wounding of Silvio Berlusconi in Milan (December 13th, 2009).

(73) We labelled political movement associations--such as the Italian Movement for Disabled People, whose group was the fifth largest with 5,336 members--or ideological groups--such as the group calling for a single radical right-wing coalition- not referring to a single party.

(74) It is the case of groups dealing with local elections, which took place in several cities and areas on the same day. Indeed many groups referred to the "European and local elections" while concerning the local dimension only.

(75) The original title is: "Europee+referendum: contro gli sprechi".

(76) The original title is: "Unificare elezioni e referendum 6-7giugno! Risparmiamo 400Milioni di euro!"

(77) Original title: "Alle elezioni Europee noi NON VOTIAMO BERLUSCONI!!!!"

(78) Original title: "Quelli che alle prossime elezioni europee NON voteranno per Silvio!"

(79) Luigi de Magistris is a former prosecutor, well-known for his involvement in trials against political corruption which involved well-known civil society actors.

(80) Rita Borsellino is the sister of a former judge killed by mafia.

(81) He is a popular Italian journalist, whose main areas of interest have been political and judiciary issues. He became well-known for his participation in popular talk shows and for investigating Berlusconi's business.

(82) Giorgio Grossi, L'Europa degli italiani. L'Italia degli europei (Roma: Rai/Vqpt. 1996); Cees van der Eijk and Mark Franklin, eds., Choosing Europe? The European electorate and national politics in the face of Union (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press,1995).

(83) Marlyna Lim and Mark Kann, "Politics: Deliberation, Mobilization, and Networked Practices of Agitation", Networked Publics, ed. Kazys Varnelis (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008). 77-107; Henry Farrell, Eric Lawrence and John Sides, Self- Segregation or Deliberation? Blog Readers and Political Polarization (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the MPSA Annual National Conference, Chicago, April 3rd, 2008) [online]; available at: www.allacademic.com.

(84) Sonia Livingstone, "Taking risky opportunities in youthful content creation: teenagers' use of social networking sites for intimacy, privacy and self-expression", New Media & Society 10 (3), (2008): 393-411.

(85) Sara Bentivegna, Campagne elettorali in rete, (Bari: Laterza, 2006).

(86) Oyvind Kalnes, "Norwegian parties and web 2.0".

(87) Sara Bentivegna, Campagne elettorali in rete, 36.

(88) Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture.

(89) Stephen Coleman, Jay G. Blumler, (2009). The internet and Democratic Citizenship, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 181.

(90) Nigel A. Jackson and Darren G. Lilleker, "Building an architecture of participation? Political parties and web 2.0 in Britain", Journal of information technologies and politics, 6 (3-4), (2009): 232-250.

(91) Nigel A. Jackson and Darren G. Lilleker, "Building an architecture of participation?", 248.

(92) Karlheinz Reif and Hermann Schmitt, "Nine Second-Order National Elections: A Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of European Election Results", European Journal of Political Research, 8 (1), (1980): 3-45.

(93) As the No-B Day movement, and the student movement in Autumn 2008.

Table 1. Online candidates

 online website blog

PD 19,16% 78,94% 21,05%
PDL 66.17% 91,11% 8,88%
UDC 36.11% 88,46% 11,53%
LN 22,72% 93,33% 6,66%
IdV 75,92% 65,85% 34,14%
SeL 40,90% 62,96% 37,03%
PRC 26,47% 66,66% 33,33%
Radical 14,81% 25,00% 75,00%

Table 3. The "web campaigning" (most relevant data) (71)

 PDL PD IDV UDC LN PRC SeL

Link to the party's web site 31 35 27 16 10 12 9
Link to external web sites 30 40 29 17 9 12 8
Link to candidate's page on
 Facebook, Twitter 28 35 28 11 6 9 4
Audiovisual materials 27 45 36 16 4 13 5
Capability of linking 2 11 5 0 0 2 1
 articles to visitors'
 site/Facebook/Twitter
Branding 3 2 8 0 0 2 2

 Radical TOTAL %
 (n=237)

Link to the party's web site 6 146 61.6%
Link to external web sites 6 151 63.7%
Link to candidate's page on
 Facebook, Twitter 5 125 52.7%
Audiovisual materials 7 152 64.1%
Capability of linking 1 22 9.2%
 articles to visitors'
 site/Facebook/Twitter
Branding 0 17 7.1%

Table 3. Groups on Facebook

 members members members members
 at at at at
Group's typology N 3/03/09 5/04/09 3/05/09 7/06/09

In support of
 candidates 143 369 1.360 11.097 19.778
In support of
 political parties
 and movements 47 5.752 8.292 24.842 29.572
single issues 148 14.244 34.568 58.064 62.902