Comparing online campaigning: The evolution of interactive campaigning from Royal to Obama to Hollande

© 2016 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.Studies of election campaigning from a comparative perspective have a long history; this study approaches the topic through a most-similar regime perspective to explore the ebb and flow of innovations in digital campaigning between presidential campaigns in France and the United States. The hype surrounding the 2008 Obama campaign overshadowed innovations in France the previous year, while the 2011 contest gained little serious academic attention. Using a well-established content analysis methodology the research explains the strategic design of the digital dimension of the campaigns of the leading candidates (Sarkozy and Royal in 2007, Obama and McCain in 2008, Hollande and Sarkozy in 2011, and Obama and Romney in 2012). The research then assesses the strategic contribution of each feature using schematics for understanding the flow of communication, as well as the strategy employed by each candidate. The key findings are that the campaigns are becoming more interactive, with the citizens increasingly more able to enter into conversations with the campaign teams, however interactivity when it happens is carefully controlled. Largely, however, there is a strong similarity masked by the sophistication of US contests. Despite the advances in communication technology and the social trends they have instigated, campaign communication remains top-down and digital technologies are used to gather data and push supporters towards activism than creating an inclusive space for the co-creation that cyberoptimists argued would revitalise the structures of democracy

Giving voters what they want? Party orientation perceptions and preferences in the British electorate

Some of the most important propositions in the political marketing literature hinge on assumptions about the electorate. In particular, voters are presumed to react in different ways to different orientations or postures. Yet there are theoretical reasons for questioning some of these assumptions, and certainly they have seldom been empirically tested. Here, we focus on one prominent example of political marketing research: Lees-Marshment’s orientations’ model. We investigate how the public reacts to product and market orientation, whether they see a trade-off between the two (a point in dispute among political marketing scholars), and whether partisans differ from non-partisan voters by being more inclined to value product over market orientation. Evidence from two mass sample surveys of the British public (both conducted online by YouGov) demonstrates important heterogeneity within the electorate, casts doubt on the core assumptions underlying some political marketing arguments and raises broader questions about what voters are looking for in a party

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

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

Get Organised: The 'Do's' Preceding Successful Field Research

There is no shortage in the political science literature on field research regarding issues of research design, methodology, and data evaluation. Yet, the practical and organisational intricacies that precede successful fieldwork are frequently overlooked. This lack of methodical advice may be due to the impression that field research is highly contextual, and so case-specific that general guidelines, which apply to all field research endeavours alike, are inconceivable. While we acknowledge the organisational complexity of field research, we disagree with the notion that the preparatory dimension of fieldwork is by necessity unique for every undertaking. Rather, recommendations for common challenges that occur during the preparation and organisation phase of a field trip can be identified and formulated. Consequently, we present and discuss ten organisational ?do's? preceding successful field research. Current graduate students and future field researchers will regard these ten pointers as useful hints in the organisation of their own endeavour. While the list is by no means exhaustive, the ten recommendations will lower the organisational entry costs of aspiring field researchers, and enable them to hit the ground running when arriving in the field

The Psychology of Democracy

Copyright © The Authors. What is a democracy? Why do we form democratic systems? Can democracy survive in an age of distrust and polarisation? The Psychology of Democracy explains the psychological underpinnings behind why people engage with and participate in politics. Covering the influence that political campaigns and media play, the book analyses topical and real-world political events including the Arab Spring, Brexit, Black Lives Matter, the US 2020 elections and the Covid-19 pandemic. Lilleker and Ozgul take the reader on a journey to explore the cognitive processes at play when engaging with a political news item all the way through to taking to the streets to protest government policy and action. In an age of post-truth and populism, The Psychology of Democracy shows us how a strong and healthy democracy depends upon the feelings and emotions of its citizens, including trust, belonging, empowerment and representation, as much as on electoral processes.https://www.routledge.com/The-Psychology-of-Democracy/Lilleker-Ozgul/p/book/9780367898175https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003021292/psychology-democracy-darren-lilleker-billur-aslan-ozgu