Cristian Vaccari

From the air to the ground: the internet in the 2004 US presidential campaign

Political campaigns have learned how to take advantage of online tools not only to communicate their message, but also, and more importantly, to mobilize supporters and provide opportunities for e-volunteers to become engaged in the process. Among the most significant developments in the 2004 US presidential election were strategies and tools designed to facilitate the transition from online to off-line engagement, thus strengthening field operations in a campaign where the ground game proved to be a crucial asset. These topics are addressed through in-depth qualitative interviews with senior aides to the e-campaigns of George W. Bush and John F. Kerry. Online political communication professionals predict that in the future the internet will become an increasingly relevant tool in campaigns and that its functions will be adopted all through the campaign organization.

Political expression and action on social media: Exploring the relationship between lower- and higher-threshold political activities among Twitter users in Italy

Scholars and commentators have debated whether lower-threshold forms of political engagement on social media should be treated as being conducive to higher-threshold modes of political participation or a diversion from them. Drawing on an original survey of a representative sample of Italians who discussed the 2013 election on Twitter, we demonstrate that the more respondents acquire political information via social media and express themselves politically on these platforms, the more they are likely to contact politicians via e-mail, campaign for parties and candidates using social media, and attend offline events to which they were invited online. These results suggest that lower-threshold forms of political engagement on social media do not distract from higher-threshold activities, but are strongly associated with them.

“Technology Is a Commodity”: The Internet in the 2008 United States Presidential Election

The role of the Internet as a tool for participation and organization has been considered the most important innovation in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign and one of the key strategic factors in Barack Obamas conquest of the Democratic nomination and the White House. This article analyzes e-campaigning in the 2008 election through data drawn from qualitative interviews with 31 consultants and operatives who were involved in the presidential race. Rather than adopting a technocentric perspective, our interviewees acknowledge that several contextual factors enhance or hinder the effectiveness of online tools, such as the message of the campaign, the candidates personality, and his or her ability to generate enthusiasm in the electorate, together with the campaigns strategic prioritization of grassroots electioneering. Technology is seen more as an efficient channel of preexisting motivations and loyalties than as a driver of these attitudes. Moreover, while the Web has often been characterized as presenting campaigns with a dilemma between top-down hierarchy and bottom-up spontaneity, Internet professionals and operatives argue that contemporary e-campaigning tools can help achieve both goals and breed a hybrid organizing model that reconciles control and empowerment through the skillful use of individual data. These findings have important implications regarding the strategic and organizational dynamics of contemporary campaigns and the role of citizen participation within them.

Accidental exposure to politics on social media as online participation equalizer in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom:

We assess whether and how accidental exposure to political information on social media contributes to citizens’ online political participation in comparative perspective. Based on three online surveys of samples representative of German, Italian, and British Internet users in the aftermath of the 2014 European Parliament elections, we find that accidental exposure to political information on social media is positively and significantly correlated with online participation in all three countries, particularly so in Germany where overall levels of participation were lower. We also find that interest in politics moderates this relationship so that the correlation is stronger among the less interested than among the highly interested. These findings suggest that inadvertent encounters with political content on social media are likely to reduce the gap in online engagement between citizens with high and low interest in politics, potentially broadening the range of voices that make themselves heard.

Follow the leader! Direct and indirect flows of political communication during the 2013 Italian general election campaign

This article evaluates the potential that Twitter affords politicians to communicate to citizens directly, through messages that they broadcast to users who follow them, and indirectly, to the extent that their followers autonomously re-circulate politicians’ messages to their own contacts. Analysis of more than 2 million accounts of followers of 10 national party leaders during the Italian 2013 general election campaign shows that most users are rather inactive and have very small followings. Moreover, the most followed politicians have on average the least active and followed users, and vice versa. Users’ activity and followings are also unevenly distributed, with very tiny minorities accounting for the vast majority of tweets and followers. The most followed followers of politicians are celebrities in realms other than politics, or people who are already highly visible in the politics-media ecosystem. Our findings suggest that most of the potential for indirect communication may lie in the “vital middle” of the Twitter population who are more active than average, but are not part of the restricted elite of high-impact outliers.

From echo chamber to persuasive device? Rethinking the role of the Internet in campaigns

Most of the e-campaigning literature claims that the Internet can reinforce political attitudes, but not change them. In this article, I analyze the issue through the receive−accept−sample (RAS) theory, which postulates that messages can change attitudes if they are both received and accepted by audiences. Based on qualitative elite interviews with 31 consultants and operatives involved in the 2008 United States presidential election, I argue that campaigns are finding new avenues to improve both reception and acceptance of their messages, and the implications merit close empirical scrutiny. The probability of message reception can be increased by citizens’ propensity to seek out issue positions online and by diffusion through low-threshold activities by supporters; the probability of message acceptance can be augmented by video and the targeting of content; finally, indirect persuasion through interpersonal communication can increase the probability of both reception and acceptance.

THE NEWS MEDIA AS NETWORKED POLITICAL ACTORS

Research on internet politics has found that digital media have contributed to a hybridization of the organizational practices of parties, movements and interest groups. Little attention, however, has been paid to how the news media employ online engagement tools to pursue political goals, as is the case when political parallelism is present. This study addresses this issue through an in-depth analysis of two Italian cases: the e-petition campaigns by the newspaper la Repubblica and the assemblage of a convergent media network to broadcast a protest rally organized by the television talk show host Michele Santoro. Online citizen engagement now constitutes a valuable political resource for journalists and news organizations that have historically been involved in the political battlefield rather than practicing objectivity and neutrality. However, these efforts are limited in their democratic potential to the extent that they constitute top-down leveraging of audience support by media elites rather than grassroots channels for citizens to set the agenda and voice their opinions. The relevance of these phenomena goes well beyond Italy, as parts of the media systems of most Western democracies are characterized by political parallelism.

Party Campaigners or Citizen Campaigners? How Social Media Deepen and Broaden Party-Related Engagement

Digital media are often blamed for accelerating the decline of political parties as channels for citizen participation. By contrast, we show that political engagement on social media may revitalize party activities because these platforms are means for both party members and ordinary citizens to discuss politics and engage with and around political parties. Using online surveys conducted in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, we find that party members engage in a wider variety of party-related activities than average respondents, but the same can also be said of nonparty members who informally discuss politics on social media. Moreover, the strength of the relationship between party membership and engagement decreases as the intensity of political discussion on social media increases. This suggests that political discussions on social media can narrow the divide in party-related engagement between members and nonmembers, and to some extent flatten rather than reinforce existing political hierarchies. Finally, we find that the correlation between party membership and engagement is stronger in Germany, where party organizations are more robust, than in Italy and the United Kingdom, highlighting the role of party organizational legacies in the digital age.

You’ve Got (No) Mail: How Parties and Candidates Respond to E-mail Inquiries in Western Democracies

ABSTRACT Although e-mail is one of the most popular components of users’ experiences of the Internet, its use by political actors in campaigns has rarely been studied. In this article, I explore political actors’ responsiveness to e-mails coming from citizens through a large-scale, longitudinal study of 194 parties and candidates in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States between 2007 and 2013. In order to assess political actors’ e-mail responsiveness, two fictitious e-mails were sent to each of them: one requesting issue information, the other pledging to be willing to volunteer. Results show that most parties and candidates fail to respond to both types of e-mails, and that progressive parties tend to respond more than conservative ones.

Online mobilization in comparative perspective: Digital appeals and political engagement in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom

This study analyzes the relationship between online voter mobilization and political engagement in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom during the 2014 European election campaign. Internet surveys of samples representatives of these countries’ populations with Internet access show that respondents who received an invitation to vote for a party or candidate via e-mail or social media engaged in a significantly higher number of political activities than those who did not. Moreover, the relationship between mobilization and engagement was stronger among those who followed the campaign less attentively, as well as in countries where overall levels of engagement with the campaign were lower (Germany and the United Kingdom) than where they were higher (Italy). These findings indicate that online mobilization may contribute to closing gaps in political engagement at both individual and aggregate levels, and thus suggest that digital media may contribute to reviving democratic citizenship.