The growing importance of the uses of digital tools and devices related to the internet by candidates, parties and political campaign's crews in almost twenty years of the online campaign's existence produced emblematic cases like the election of Barack Obama in 2008. This paper organizes the major questions, discussions and contributions of the online campaign's literature. The whole work here is designed to organize, in a chronological manner, the advances of the preoccupations related to the use of the internet by candidates and political parties. In the same way, we bring in to the light the dynamic of changes in the treatments of the questions and the potential of the new technologies in the electoral contests. Our results indicate that the literature changes the main focus of the preoccupations, discussions and de design of the empirical researches along the years, beginning with the interactivity potentials of the internet as well as the importance of the unmediated political information until reaching the actual phase of the online campaigns that emphasizes the engagement and mobilization potentials of the digital communications in line with the web 2.0 principles.
internet; elections; online campaigns