\u00d8yvind Kalnes is Assistant professor in Political Science at the University College of Lillehammer, Norway. Correspondence concerning this paper should be addressed to:oyvind.kalnes@hil.no or Lillehammer University College, Pb 952, 2604 Lillehammer, NORWAY.

This paper analyses how Norwegian political parties have handled the appearance of Web 2.0. It focuses on the campaign for the local elections in September 2007 and the developments up to the forthcoming Parliamentary elections two years later.

By 2005 most parties had learned to use their Web sites as instruments for professional political marketing. In this process of streamlining party presence on the Web acquired the characteristics of what now is conceptualized as Web 1.0. But in 2007 Facebook became the most popular website in Norway, with YouTube rising to number three. The political parties appeared bewildered by the Web 2.0 phenomenon, indicating a similar stage at which they were ten years earlier with Web 1.0.

All seven parliamentary parties and four smaller parties outside parliament are included in the analysis. The data consists of samples of party activity on Facebook, YouTube and politicians' blogs, as well as an overview of other types of Web 2.0 activity. The data samples have been taken at regular intervals since spring 2007, up to and including spring 2009. Hence, data from the campaign for the Parliamentary elections in September 2009 is somewhat limited in this paper. Furthermore, interviews with all party web managers were conducted in 2007 and will be supplied with new interviews after the campaign.

The data is discussed on the background of an \u201ce-ruption hypothesis\u201d versus a \u201cWeb 1.5 \u2013 hypothesis\u201d. While the first hypothesis expects Web 2.0 to have at least potential for making changes in both internal party structure and party system structure, the latter hypothesis expects continuity, rather than change. The central topics are whether the emergence of Web 2.0, with its potential for grassroots participation and networking, as well as multilateral interactivity, was a catalyst of \u201ce-ruptive\u201d change towards greater pluralism in the party system or more grassroots participation. The data so far indicate that in terms of party competition Web 2.0 has had at best a weak pluralizing effect, as party visibility on Web 2.0 roughly reflects party share of votes. While Web 2.0 temporarily appeared to have enhanced participatory democracy in the sense of lowering the threshold for involvement of party grassroots and \u2013sympathizers, data from 2009 indicates that the party organizations now are in the process of getting more control.

Periods of technological transition invite to speculations about radical systemic changes. Web 2.0 is shorthand for a new breed of Internet applications for multilateral sharing, discussion and networking. Hence, it is the collective of users that generates the contents, in contrast to an Internet based on unilaterality and a strict separation between content producers and \u2013users. The latter represents what now is generally conceptualized as Web 1.0. While Tim Berners-Lee has protested against this as an imprecise and artificial definition (cited in Anderson, 2006), it nevertheless captures a trend in the development of the World Wide Web, which \u201cenable new ways of connectivity for networking, interfacing and producing content\u201d (Pascu et al., 2007) or generates \u201cuser participation, openness and network effects" (O'Reilly 2005).

The scope of Web 2.0 applications varies enormously, but includes blogging, podcasting, wikis, as well as peer-to-peer and social networking sites. As long as users are co-producers and networking is provided for one might, like Pascu et al (2007) also include search engines, auction Web sites, games, and Voice-over-IP services. Web sites may therefore also be hybrids containing Web 1.0 elements side by side with Web 2.0 elements, tilted more or less towards one side or the other.

This article discusses the Norwegian political parties\u2019 adaption to the Web 2.0 phenomenon, focusing on election campaigning. In the course of roughly a fifteen year period these parties have adapted to the rise of the Internet and established their presence on the Web. By 2005 this presence had taken the form of party Web sites geared towards professional political marketing, conforming to a standard resembling Web 1.0. If this represents a consolidation mirroring the standard business of politics, would it reasonable to expect that a Web 2.0 might trigger changes in how parties and activists operate on the World Wide Web (WWW) - or even how they operate as actual organizations?