In its simplest form, the idea of ​​Americanization draws attention to the existence of practices that were first developed in the United States and which were then adopted in other political systems and absorbed into political communication practices (Negrine, 2008:152). The term “American model” means “…election campaigns in democracies around the world are becoming increasingly Americanized as candidates, political parties and the media take cues from their counterparts in the United States” (Swanson and Mancini, 1996:4 ) . However, there is debate as to what the "American model" of election campaigns actually means, as the spread of practices used by the United States could be due to a number of reasons such as increased technology, globalization, and modernization. This doesn't mean that political campaigns are becoming "Americanized," but that they are simply doing the things that are proven to deliver results to win elections. The influence of the Internet on political campaigns has been an interesting topic of study since the rise of the Internet in the mid-1990s (Anstead an Chadwick, 2008). Farrell, Kolodny and Medvic state that "...the campaign process went through three main phases of development..." (Farrell, et all, 2001:12). First, it was newspaper-led campaigns, then television, and now, with the rise of digital media and technologies, political campaigns have taken a general direction. The most notable Internet campaign was Howard Dean's 2004 campaign, which demonstrated that there was a new and more efficient way to campaign using available technological resources. From here, political campaigns have transformed considerably, Obama '08 for example. The main characteristics of postmodern campaigns fall into these three h... halves of the paper... of politics and journalism. Working paper, Norris, P., (2000), A Virtuous Circle: Political Communication in Postindustrial Societies. [Evaluated 3/2/14 - http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~pnorris/Books/Virtuous%20Circle.htm].Norris, P., (2004), "The Evolution of Election Campaigns: Eroding the 'political commitment' ?'Smith, C.F. and Webster, W.R., (2004), 'Members of the Scottish Parliamnet on the Net' Information Polity, 9:67-80.Swanson, D.L., and Mancini, P., (1996) , Politics, Media and Modern Democracy: An International Study of Campaign Innovations and Their Consequences (Google eBook) (Greenwood Publishing Group). The Electoral Commission, (2010), “UK General Election 2010: Campaign Spending Report” http://www .electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/109388/2010-UKPGE-Campaign- expenditure-report.pdf [Rated on 6/3/14].