Usage Patterns at AllPolitics²⁹
During the general election campaign, the issue pages at AllPolitics were generally less visited than other pages at the site. Only when an issue was "hot" in the campaign was that particular issue information frequently accessed.
One reason that issue information was not as heavily accessed as other information is that it was not updated as frequently as news, analysis and polling data. Background information on the issues did not change, nor did the candidates' stands on particular issues. Thus, AllPolitics users do not need to return to the issues pages, since there is little likelihood of change. According to AllPolitics Executive Producer Mike Riley, "The issues briefings are not updated as frequently as other pages, so they generally get a look or two and then visitors head elsewhere once they realize they've gotten the overview."
Another reason for the lack of accesses to the issues information on AllPolitics is the news-driven nature of the site. The layout of the front page was designed to encourage users to explore the news and analysis sections rather than go in-depth on the issues. A paragraph or two of each of the leading news stories is the focus of the AllPolitics front page, and links point users to the complete stories as well as the complete news section. The "Best Bytes" section of the front page, a narrow column on the left of the page, provides pointer to a number of features inside AllPolitics, generally news, analysis, polls and games. Thus, users generally hit the front page to check the hot news stories, then proceed to the news section. According to Riley, "Our front page navigation (Best Bytes included) helped steer people where we wanted them to go."
Another very popular section of AllPolitics was the poll area. Visits to pages within the poll section were approximately five times more frequent than within the issues section. This can be attributed not only to the fact that there was generally a pointer from the front page "Best Bytes" section, but to the seeming infatuation with the presidential campaign as a horse race. In this area, AllPolitics was able to provide a constant supply of tracking polls for the horse-race hungry. A positive side effect of the popularity of the polls is that most poll results reported by AllPolitics did go beyond the horse race: the internals of most polls were also available to casual users, providing more detailed demographic breakdowns and approval ratings. However, because all of the data for a poll was loaded at once, it is impossible to tell if users were actually reading this additional information. The fact that the typical user visited the poll results five times more often than the issues section shows that the horse race continues to play an important part roll in many users' attempts to follow the campaign.
Given the news-driven nature of AllPolitics and the fact that it is owned by two of the major mainstream news organizations -- Time and CNN -- it is not surprising that the site has been designed to push readers to the content specialties of the two organizations. These are not only the area in which they can do the most updating, but the areas in which they can provide top-notch coverage without expanding their resources beyond what is already in place for AllPolitics traditional-media counterparts.
Special issue reports -- on Whitewater, the FBI files, the budget and campaign finance reform -- were all very popular. These special reports, however, got more specialized links from the front page and other sections of the site than a typical issue background report. With the exception of the budget, however, all of these special reports fall more in the realm of campaign issues, concerning the campaign and its strategy, rather than issues important to voter decisions.
Another popular feature of the AllPolitics site was the "Dialog" section, which allowed users to post messages, bulletin-board style, on a range of topics related to the election. The discussion here was seldom on topics related directly to issues. The lack of user reliance on on-line discussions for political information seems to indicate that such discussion forums were neither widely used, nor had much of an impact on voters.
The AllPolitics analysis and candidate sections were also popular, according to Riley. The candidate sections in particular were able to provide a lot of information that overlapped with that in the issue section. Each candidate's section featured a section about his position on various issues, including direct quotations and third-party analysis.
AllPolitics found that most users did not visit the Issues section on a regular basis, but did return from time to time throughout the campaign. These returns were mostly a result of the users' particular personal interests or were dictated by issues currently in the top news stories. In the case of such top news stories, users were usually guided to background information in the issues section by links in the news stories themselves.
Users accessed the issues section both through front-page links and through links provided in relevant news and analysis pieces, but it is clear that the most highly-used pieces within the issues section relied on special links spread throughout the site to draw users, rather than being accessed from the main page of the issues section.
Based on the popularity of PoliticsNow and AllPolitics, these types of sites are likely to remain the top of the heap in specialized political reporting on the Internet. However, the volatility of the market (as evidenced by the PoliticsUSA/ElectionLine merger) and the lack of demand during non-election periods will probably mean that PoliticsNow and AllPolitics as we know them will no longer exist by the time coverage of the 2000 presidential race starts to heat up. Their traditional-media roots make them very reliable and trustworthy sources of information for users, and their popularity and relatively low overhead costs insure that their news-organization parents will continue to keep them viable.