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A short text from The Guardian
The report concludes: "The new media is a way for them to get closer to the public without necessarily allowing the public to become overly familiar in return.
The authors - Rachel Gibson and Stephen Ward - go on to state that this may be because parties still regard the web as an electioneering tool, rather than as a democratic device.
They said: "Very few offered original material, or changed their sites noticeably over the course of the campaign. Indeed, a large majority of local sites were really no more than static electronic brochures."
They dub this "rather disappointing", but praise the Liberal Democrats as "clearly the most active" with around 150 sites.
The report concludes: "Parties, as with the general public, need incentives to use the technology. As yet, there seems more to lose and less to gain if they make mistakes experimenting with the technology."