Karolina Koc-Michalska

Informing, engaging, mobilizing or interacting: Searching for a European model of web campaigning

This study presents data from content analyses of the websites of all parties that stood in the 2009 European parliamentary elections in France, Germany, Great Britain and Poland. It cross-nationally examines the main functions of the websites, the adoption of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 features, and the political and cultural factors that determine parties’ online communication. The findings show that while the main website function varies across countries, Web 1.0 is still the dominant mode of campaigning. Moreover, offline inequalities within and between nations determine differences in parties’ individual online strategies: specifically, major parties in states with long histories of democracy and EU membership lead the way and offer more interactive and innovative modes of campaigning. On the other hand, minor parties, particularly in Poland, remain in a more Web 1.0, information-heavy mode of communication. This supports the so-called normalization thesis on both the meso and the macro level.

Online political communication strategies: MEPs e-representation and self-representation

ABSTRACT Research into the communication strategies of legislators has a long history. The European Parliament offers an opportunity to add to understanding of how legislators prioritize styles of communication, with a comparative perspective across 27 nations. Through content analysis of online communication, we investigate how the Internet is used by members of the European Parliament. Our analysis assesses three communication strategies: homestyle, impression management, and participatory. We find that a homestyle strategy predominates, followed by impression management. Participatory communication is emergent, but may earn legislators political capital, as it appears that proactive communicators who offer participatory opportunities are more likely to build an online following.

Online Campaigning in France, 2007–2012: Political Actors and Citizens in the Aftermath of the Web.2.0 Evolution

ABSTRACT This article examines political elites and citizens’ use of the Web during the 2007 and 2012 French presidential campaigns particularly with the aim of testing the normalization and mobilization hypothesis at two levels of analysis: supply and demand. It is based on a quantitative content analysis of the candidates’ Web sites and two surveys of French Internet users. The results present a challenge to the normalization thesis at the elite level, in that despite a strong division in online performance between the major and other candidates in 2007, by 2012 the minor candidates outperformed their major counterparts. Among voters, the results also run somewhat contrary to normalization, with a weakening in the significance of socio-demographic factors in determining traditional types of online engagement. In addition, the new social media sphere appears to encourage younger and less politicized citizens to participate. The importance of prior political attitudes such as interest and trust, however, remain strong.

Poland’s 2011 Online Election Campaign: New Tools, New Professionalism, New Ways to Win Votes

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the use of the online environment within the context of the Polish parliamentary election of 2011. Using traditional methods of content analysis, we find that parties tend to adhere to a professionalized model of campaigning, and adapting online tools to suit the objectives of the campaign. There also appears to be a recognition that their most likely visitors to these online presences would be converts, and so they attempt to mobilize supporters rather than convert browsers. New parties and candidates are more likely to target browsers, with the latter offering a more personalized experience to online visitors. Importantly, when analyzing the outcome of the contest, we find that being online matters for candidates when controlling for all other variables. Equally, the reach the candidate has, which may well influence their vote share, is dependent on offering a more personalized, representational image and having a frequently updated online presence that should encourage repeat visits. Cumulatively, we suggest the future of online campaigning must not only focus on having a presence, but on using it in a way that appeals to a range of visitors, encouraging repeat visits, and that this strategy could have a positive impact on election outcomes.

Civic political engagement and social change in the new digital age

Over recent decades, research on the internet and political participation has substantially developed, from speculative studies on possible impacts in social and economic life to detailed analyses of organizational usage. In the field of politics focus is increasingly shifting from understanding organizational, or supply side, to the usage and dimension of citizen engagement. Citizens have various ways to engage in civic political life, with many new forms of engagement facilitated by digital technologies. The question is to what extent these forms of engagement have any impact on society and the way society is governed. More particularly, what forms of engagement have impact, what type of impact is evidenced, is that impact positive or negative, in what ways and for whom?

The professionals speak: Practitioners’ perspectives on professional election campaigning:

Faced with some fundamental changes in the socio-cultural, political and media environment, political parties in post-industrialized democracies have started to initiate substantial transformations of both their organizational structures and communicative practices. Those innovations, described as professionalization, become most obvious during election campaigns. In recent times, the number of empirical studies measuring the degree of political parties’ campaign professionalism has grown. They have relied on a broad spectrum of indicators derived from theory which have not been tested for their validity. For the first time, we put these indicators to a ‘reality check’ by asking top-ranked party secretaries and campaign managers in 12 European countries to offer their perceptions of professional election campaigning. Furthermore, we investigate whether any differences in understanding professionalism among party campaign practitioners can be explained by macro (country) and meso (party) factors. By and large, our results confirm the validity of most indicators applied in empirical studies on campaign professionalism so far. There are some party- and country-related differences in assessing campaign professionalism too, but the influence of most factors on practitioners’ evaluations is weak. Therefore, we conclude that largely there is a far-reaching European Union-wide common understanding of professional election campaigning.

Digital Politics: Mobilization, Engagement, and Participation

A wealth of studies have explored online political communication since the early 1990s, and parallel significant interest has been given to how digital technologies offer pathways to participation. We have learned from a range of studies, most of which are referenced across the essays, that digital technologies, and particular the spaces that permit social interaction, may facilitate forms of political engagement.

What Drives Political Participation? Motivations and Mobilization in a Digital Age

This article provides insights into the driving forces that underpin new forms of political participation. Digital technologies offer opportunities for engaging in a wide range of civically oriented activities, each of which can contribute to deeper democratic engagement. Conventional acts of political participation are argued to be driven primarily by intrinsic motivations relating to self-efficacy and empowerment, with participants feeling they can have influence over decision makers. Little research explores whether similar motivations drive participation in less conventional acts, as well as whether mobilization attempts via social media by peers or political organizations mediate those motivations. Drawing on data from a survey among a representative sample of the U.K. electorate, we find the offline and online spheres of agency remain fairly distinct. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations both matter but extrinsic motivations have the strongest explanatory power independent of the sphere of activity. The mediating effect of mobilization tactics has a minimal effect on extrinsic motivations, online or offline, but online intrinsic motivations lose their explanatory power. As intrinsic factors offer little explanatory power, some forms of online political participation may lack meaning to the individual. Rather, these non-conventional acts result from reward seeking and are more likely to be encouraged by nongovernmental campaigning organizations, suggesting social media users are most likely to perform simple acts in support of non-contentious causes.

The normalization of online campaigning in the web.2.0 era

This article is based on a comparative study of online campaigning and its effects by country and over time, using four of the largest European Union member states (France, Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom) as a case study. Our research explores the extent of embeddedness of online campaigning, the strategic uses of the whole online environment and in particular the use of the interactive features associated with web.2.0 era. However, our research goes beyond studies of online campaigning as we also determine whether online campaigning across platforms matters in electoral terms. Our data support the normalization hypothesis which shows overall low levels of innovation but that the parties with the highest resources tend to develop online campaigns with the highest functionality. We find that there is a vote dividend for those parties which utilized web.2.0 features the most and so offered visitors to their web presence a more interactive experience.

Social media campaigning in Europe: Mapping the terrain

The evolution of political communication as a practice has seen political actors constantly adapting to communication technologies. Scammell (1994) documents how, as a gubernatorial candidate, Theodore Roosevelt exploited the potential of embedded pictures in print news, and how UK prime minister Stanley Baldwin employed actors to help him develop the appropriate tone of voice for radio to match the news he was imparting. Later, Ronald Reagan pioneered the televisual performance, while in the UK Margaret Thatcher was redefining prime ministerial media management. While mainstream political figures innovated with traditional media the pioneers of Internet campaigning were largely outsiders—challengers to the U.S. two-party system. When former wrestler Jesse Ventura crowdsourced support for his 1998 insurgent campaign that won him the governorship of Minnesota, he demonstrated how an outsider could challenge the establishment using digital technology. The unsuccessful but groundbreaking campaign of Democrat candidate Howard Dean in 2003 demonstrated the utility of an online crowdfunding strategy. It was Dean’s innovative style that would inform the Obama campaign of 2007–8, which would harness the full potential of social media to reach out to voters, earn donations, and build a campaign infrastructure across the United States by harnessing the enthusiasm of his young support base (Lilleker & Jackson, 2011) as well as an established progressive online activist network (Karpf, 2012; Kreiss, 2012). Although the history of innovative use of technology has a U.S.-centric flavor, one should not underestimate the impact of these developments across Western democracies. Campaign strategists travel the world learning how to campaign and what innovations work, shopping around to learn the latest tactical advantages (Plasser & Plasser, 2002) and then adapting them for competitive advantage in their home nations (Lees-Marshment & Lilleker, 2012). The developments have largely seen digital technology employed to further the objectives of the campaign, not create interactive spaces where citizens and politicians canmeet or where political issues of the day are debated (Lilleker &Vedel, 2013). Hence, technology is employed to meet the requirements of a campaign with minimal adaptation to the content of political communication. The communication forms appropriate to technologies, such as Twitter and Facebook as was formerly the case with radio and television, become incorporated into the toolboxes and repertoires of political campaigners. In turn, as digital technologies increasingly become embedded in political communication, research has burgeoned with works exploring the way in which e-mail, Web sites and more recently the plethora of social media platforms are employed and impact the implementation of election campaigns. Studies have charted the increased use of Web sites, Weblog tools, e-mail, and most recently social media by political campaigns (Gibson & Ward, 2009), as well as the use of similar platforms by citizens to communicate about elections and political issues more generally (Loader, Vromen, & Xenos, 2014). As political participation develops an online dimension, so political parties, in particular during elections, seek to exploit the affordances of digital technologies to harness supporters and garner support (Tencher et al., 2016). The questions are how and with what effect? Apart from the innovations of outsider candidates such as Ventura, the early days of Internet campaigning involved the development of something akin to an online shop front. The Web site provided a means by which citizens could learn more about a candidate or party, and be persuaded that the platform they offered