Political Parties Use of New Media

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• Political Parties Use of New Media
• Professor Rachel Gibson, Institute for Social
  Change, University of Manchester.
• Workshop 1B The role of political parties in
  electoral processes Council of Europe Forum for
  the Future of DemocracyOctober 21-23, Kyiv,
  Ukraine

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Overview of presentation

• Identify the key areas of change for parties in
  the electoral sphere as a result of adaptation to
  the new media age.
• Focus on 3 key domains
• Campaign communication management
• Party Competition
• Effects on the electorate

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New media and party campaign communication.

• Parties, political communication, wider elections
  literature all identified growing importance of
  campaigning identified move toward more
  professionalised and high-tech style emerging in
  last 2 decades of 20th century.
• Labelled as Americanised, Modernised
  Political Marketing Capital-intensive (Butler
  and Ranney, 1992 Swanson and Mancini, 1996
  Newman, 1999 Plasser, 2000, Farrell and Webb,
  2000)
• Characterised by reliance specialist media/PR
  consultants, opinion and opposition research,
  database development, direct mail, telemarketing.
  Key shift in campaign communication style was
  move from one size fits all televisual era to
  niched, targeted and personalised communication.

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• New media fits well with these changes promotes
  more niched/narrow-casted approach to voter
  communication.
• Email, SMS, mobile telephones all promote this
  more niched and individualised approach.
• Now with the rise of web 2.0 technologies
  blogs, SNS, video sharing channels the
  possibilities for personalised communication have
  expanded greatly.
• Of course the challenge parties face is how to
  distribute their message across these
  personalised and private networks.
• While bringing more personalised direct
  commmunication style back does it narrow the
  message too much? Is a broadcasting approach
  more inclusive?

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New media and campaign management

• As well as changing the style of voter
  communication new media also offer potential for
  even greater change in how parties manage and run
  election campaign.
• The interactivity and participatory elements
  bring radically new ways to open up and involve
  amateurs or ordinary supporters.
• Again, Web 2.0 developments open up great
  possibilities for a more participatory and
  grass-roots led campaign (e.g.s from U.S. 2008
  growth of citizen-campaigning phenomenon).
• How far does it travel outside U.S. Little
  evidence taking hold elsewhere. Studies of
  parties online campaign communication since 1996
  worldwide rejected the idea that seeking to
  promote dialogue with voters (Davis et al.,
  2008). Why different in the U.S.? Party system a
  factor
• Further question to raise is what are downsides
  to this? Loss of control of message? Multiple,
  possibly competing campaign groups and
  fragmentation of platform.

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New ICTs and party competition re-balancing the
system?

• Can the new media democratise the party system
  and electoral process by boosting the profile and
  voice of smaller parties/independents,
  challenging the dominance of the major players in
  the mainstream media?
• To date the evidence from studies of party
  systems around the world has suggested that aside
  from a few high profile anomalies (Ventura, Dean,
  Roh Moo-Hyun), generally across party systems,
  the major players have continued to have a wider
  and better quality presence online (Gibson et
  al., 2003 Strandberg, 2006 Farmer and Fender,
  2005 Norris, 2001)

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However

• Certain smaller players do punch above their
  weight. Green parties generally seen to do well.
• Even if new ICTs dont equalise the
  communications playing field they widen it,
  allowing actors who would previously have lacked
  organisational resources the opportunity to
  mobilise and recruit support.
• There is a possible force multiplier effect
  that the web promotes through hyperlinks that can
  promote the presence of extremist groups in
  particular (Gerstenfeld et al. 2003).

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New media and parties ability to mobilise the
electorate.

• 64 million question Does it work? Can parties
  actually generate votes via e-campaigning?
• Evidence so far has been limited and mixed but is
  increasing and pointing toward positive effects.
• First studies done in U.S. - DAlessio (1997) a
  significant impact on candidate vote share,
  Bimber and Davis (2003) in 2000 rejected this.
  Fit with the normalisation thesis developing at
  the time.
• Overall work on general online usage and
  participation has indicated an increasingly
  positive relationship (Boulianne, 2009) and much
  publicised success of Dean and Obama in
  mobilising support via new ICTs increased claims
  for the effectiveness of online campaigns in
  generating support.
• Recently more focused studies outside of U.S.
  Ireland and Australia (Suddulich and Wall, 2010
  Gibson and McAllister 2006, 2008) have revealed
  strong support for internet campaign effects.
• Conversion vs. Mobilisation? it is the latter
  that matters most. (Brady et al., 2009)

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Conclusions How has the new media affected
parties in the electoral arena?

• Overall the new media open up a series of
  opportunities and challenges to political parties
  in the electoral process.
• Rise of web 2.0 in particular has increased
  opportunities for them to target voters, to
  talk to voters and involve them in the campaign
  and recruit support.
• However they also present a challenge in that in
  chasing these benefits parties may lose their
  wide aggregating role, foster a more pluralised
  fragmented and ultimately incoherent message that
  cannot provide a governing mandate.
• Context clearly affects the extent to which these
  opportunities and challenges exist internet
  access, party system, civic culture, election
  regulations all important.
• Time is ripe for future comparative work in the
  area!

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Watch this space

• New 3 year project The Internet, Electoral
  Politics and Citizen Participation in Global
  Perspective
• Comparative study of 4 elections - UK (2010)
  Australia (2010) France (2012) U.S. (2012)
• Parliamentary and Presidential systems testing
  the idea of whether new style of bottom-up
  citizen-campaigning taking hold and what its
  consequences are for parties, voters and wider
  democratic system.

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Key question that emerges is how are the effects
taking place?

• 2. Direct effects? Voters exposed to web campaign
  and decided to support the candidate.
• 3. Reverse Causation? Website establishment is
  the product of likely success. Frontrunners feel
  a greater pressure to establish a site.
• 4. Web as Proxy? Website captures good campaign
  management skills, organisation that controls in
  model not capturing?
• 5. Indirect effects?
• Two-step media effect? Those with a website
  generated more offline/mainstream media attention
  to the candidate which increased profile and
  levels of support
• Web signals candidate competence?
  Development of a content rich, personalised site
  provides a short-cut to voters of high quality
  candidate, boosts image and support.

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Evidence on the question of how e-campaigns
affects vote choice.

• So far direct effects are largely dismissed due
  to small audiences for the campaign sites.
  Typically less than 5 of population accessing
  campaign sites and effects are over 2 increase
  in votes. Means conversion rate or power of
  direct effects need to be v strong.
• Recent work by Gibson and McAllister (2008) on
  Australian 2007 federal election sought to unpack
  this question ran analysis across candidates
  from different parties up and also across
  different media technologies.
• Identified 3 types of web campaign operated Web
  1.0, Web 2.0 and personalised sites
• Green voters were influenced by web 2.0 usage and
  Green candidates using web 2.0 technologies
  gained more votes
• Supporters of major parties were not influenced
  by any type of web usage but major left-wing
  candidates using personalised websites gained
  more votes. However those using web 1.0
  technologies lost votes
• Major right-wing candidates did not benefit or
  lose from online campaign.
• Concluded that use of web 2.0 technologies might
  be directly mobilising support for Green
  candidates, but that web campaigning on
  personalised sites by major party candidates
  exerting more indirect effect, communicated more
  diffuse sense of candidate competence.

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Web 1.0
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