Book

Web Campaigning

Authors:

Abstract

The use of the Web in U.S. political campaigns has developed dramatically over the course of the last several election seasons. In Web Campaigning, Kirsten Foot and Steven Schneider examine the evolution of campaigns' Web practices, based on hundreds of campaign Web sites produced by a range of political actors during the U.S. elections of 2000, 2002, and 2004. Their developmental analyses of how and why campaign organizations create specific online structures illuminates the reciprocal relationship between these production practices and the structures of both the campaign organization and the electoral arena. This practice-based approach and the focus on campaigns as Web producers make the book a significant methodological and theoretical contribution to both science and technology studies and political communication scholarship. Foot and Schneider explore the inherent tension between the desire of campaigns to maintain control over messages and resources and the generally decentralizing dynamic of Web-based communication. They analyze specific strategies by which campaigns mitigate this, examining the ways that the production techniques, coproducing Web content, online-offline convergence, and linking to other Web sites mediate the practices of informing, involving, connecting, and mobilizing supporters. Their conclusions about the past decade's trajectory of Web campaigning point the way to a political theory of technology and a technologically grounded theory of electoral politics. A digital installation available on the web illustrates core concepts discussed in the text of the book with examples drawn from archived campaign Web sites. Users have the opportunity to search these concepts in the context of fully operational campaign sites, recreating the Web experience of users during the election periods covered in the book.
... Research on the interplay between Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and politics highlights the Internet's role in political communication during elections and its use by politicians to communicate with voters (Foot & Schneider, 2006;Stieglitz, Brockmann, & Xuan, 2012). More recent research focuses on social media's relevance in political communication. ...
Chapter
This chapter draws on experiences from Uganda to interrogate social media’s potential to facilitate women’s participation in electoral processes. By taking the Pads4Girls campaign in the aftermath of the Ugandan 2016 election as a case, the chapter examines how social media can contribute to political change and electoral democracy. Social media’s potential in public communication has been demonstrated during elections globally and in heightened political situations in Uganda. Some of the most vibrant debates in Uganda were on Facebook and Twitter during the 2011 and 2016 elections and their aftermath. The data were collected through analysis of Facebook content about the Pads4Girls campaign and interviewing. The chapter builds on debates about media and gender and argues that social media facilitate conversation on electoral matters but their role depends on the context within which they are applied. The Pads4Girls campaign ended with the imprisonment of its architect over cyber harassment.
... Indeed, consulting political news websites may be qualitatively different from blogging, connecting with a politician or like-minded others on a social networking site. As digital media evolved, the sites of political candidates and political parties have become more interactive and have begun to incorporate more multimedia and interactive features (Foot & Schneider, 2006). Newer digital media forms, including blogs, online video sites such as YouTube, and social networks such as Facebook, provide even more opportunities for connecting politicians and voters. ...
Article
The emergence of new digital tools has brought about a revolution in party organizations. However, the literature is still lacking comparative studies that utilize comprehensive theoretical frameworks and consider variations in the supply‐side of party digitalization. This paper addresses both shortcomings by turning the spotlight on party websites. By relying on data from the Political Party Database, we delve into the determinants of website functionalities across a spectrum of diverse political parties. Our findings underscore that parties with less centralized leadership and affiliated to the left of the ideological spectrum tend to display websites with a broader range of functions. Moreover, younger parties also tend to present more complex websites, although this effect is mitigated by their electoral strength. Notably, a common thread among most parties is the use of their websites for mobilizing human and financial resources, while interactive features remain less prevalent.
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Human behavior in cyber space is extremely complex. Change is the only constant as technologies and social contexts evolve rapidly. This leads to new behaviors in cybersecurity, Facebook use, smartphone habits, social networking, and many more. Scientific research in this area is becoming an established field and has already generated a broad range of social impacts. Alongside the four key elements (users, technologies, activities, and effects), the text covers cyber law, business, health, governance, education, and many other fields. Written by international scholars from a wide range of disciplines, this handbook brings all these aspects together in a clear, user-friendly format. After introducing the history and development of the field, each chapter synthesizes the most recent advances in key topics, highlights leading scholars and their major achievements, and identifies core future directions. It is the ideal overview of the field for researchers, scholars, and students alike.
Chapter
Human behavior in cyber space is extremely complex. Change is the only constant as technologies and social contexts evolve rapidly. This leads to new behaviors in cybersecurity, Facebook use, smartphone habits, social networking, and many more. Scientific research in this area is becoming an established field and has already generated a broad range of social impacts. Alongside the four key elements (users, technologies, activities, and effects), the text covers cyber law, business, health, governance, education, and many other fields. Written by international scholars from a wide range of disciplines, this handbook brings all these aspects together in a clear, user-friendly format. After introducing the history and development of the field, each chapter synthesizes the most recent advances in key topics, highlights leading scholars and their major achievements, and identifies core future directions. It is the ideal overview of the field for researchers, scholars, and students alike.
Article
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Mobilization strategies are an essential part of political parties' campaign communication. By mobilizing voters and supporters , parties promote civic participation in politics, the forms of which have multiplied given the possibilities of user activities on social media. To define their online mobilization strategies, parties have to choose which forms of participation (e.g., voting, donating, or liking or sharing a post) they will seek to mobilize. Understanding mobilization as a communicative appeal to engage audiences in participatory actions, in our study we conceptually linked parties' mobilizing appeals with three campaign functions-information, interaction, and mobilization-to systematize different types of mobilization. We applied that categorization to the social media campaigns of parties and top candidates in Germany and conducted a manual quantitative content analysis of 1,495 Facebook and 1,088 Instagram posts published in the run-up to the 2021 federal election. Results show that parties primarily mobilized their audiences to vote and seek out more information (e.g., on the party's website). Although user reactions are generally an important factor of performance on social media, parties mostly avoided calls to like, share, or comment on posts. When compared, the strategies of parties and candidates indicate that mobilization is more the task of parties than of candidates. Differences between Facebook and Instagram can be attributed to the different technical affordances of the platforms. Because Facebook, unlike Instagram, supports clickable links in posts, parties are more likely to encourage users on Facebook to seek out more information online.
Article
El artículo describe el estudio de la realidad social actual de Rusia. Se estudia su reflejo en el contenido histórico de la comunicación de los usuarios de las redes sociales que permite detectar la interacción de la comunicación online y offline. Objectivos. El análisis de los acontecimientos históricos en el contenido de las redes sociales, concretamente la Revolución de octubre 1917. Metodología. Dada la complejidad de la investigación se optó por un enfoque interdisciplinar. Para la obtención del material empírico relevante fueron llevados a cabo los siguientes procedimientos: una encuesta masiva y la entrevista focogrupal; el análisis del contenido dedicado a la Revolución de octubre extraído de las redes sociales (Facebook, VKontakt, Livejournal); el análisis de redacciones dedicadas a dicho tema. El procesamiento de los datos obtenidos se efectuó mediante el programa Tableau y Automap. Resultados. El contenido histórico en las redes sociales rusoparlantes reproduce una tensión social, igual que los acontecimientos de hace 100 años. Discusión y Conclusiones. El conflicto que dividió la sociedad rusa en dos partidos enemigos en el año 1917 sigue dividiendo la sociedad también hoy en día. El campo de batalla se trasladó al ciberespacio, donde la evaluación de los acontecimientos históricos se convierte en una forma más de marcaje “amigo-enemigo” que lleva a una comunicación conflictiva y produce un aumento de la tensión social.
Article
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The article overviews the issue of interaction and mutual influence of political communications and game mechanics. Gamification of politics is postulated as a basis for understanding new forms of civil and political activity emerged in the digital age. The presented overview of research literature defines that gaming technologies, as a set of methods and techniques, influence the behavior of modern users by overcoming their passivity and involving them into political and civil processes. The paper discusses theoretical approaches to the study of digital gamification: sociological, cultural, and political economic. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the political communication - through the prism of gamification - along with digital media having characteristics of a new political subject. Separately the work considers election campaigns and the impact that new technologies and gaming practices have on the political activity of citizens.
Article
La irrupción de Twitter en la esfera política española y la llegada de los partidos políticos a Internet ha transformado el proceso democrático. Ahora, el ciudadano también puede emitir información y participar en el diálogo social. Así, Twitter se convierte en un canal de comunicación que permite establecer una conversación directa entre políticos y ciudadanos. Este artículo busca analizar la implantación de los partidos políticos españoles en Twitter y estudiar cómo se ha transformado su relación con la ciudadanía para evaluar el grado real de conversación que se da en Twitter entre políticos y ciudadanos.
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The progress of the digitalization era in democracy has led to changes in the current political contestation, especially the way candidates approach voters. This study explores broker schemes in the digital world regarding how candidates use social media to build a broker network. This study used qualitative research, by observing social media and interviewing several key informants. This study finds that in the era of digital democracy, candidates use social media to develop digital brokers, but as a pre-elaboration and intensively introduce the candidate's real work to voters. Some candidates believe that conventional brokers are still final in knowing and binding broker loyalty, but winning candidates experiment with digital brokers. On the other hand, digital democracy has provided space for candidates to focus on brokers on social media to code the brokers who will be targeted or nominated to become structured conventional brokers. This study expands the study of brokers in electoral political studies, especially insights related to digital brokerage schemes and adds focus to the study of regional elections in Indonesia. This study concludes that digital brokers are a strategy for expanding digital voter networks and persuading candidates' work to voters on social media in the long term.
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Existing research documents extensively explain the reasons for social media use during electoral campaigns. However, there is insufficient evidence showing that social media are indeed being used to complement traditional ways of communication. This chapter uses the diffusion of innovations theory to explain the adoption and non-adoption of Facebook (FB) by Romanian political parties during the 2019 European election campaign. The chapter addresses two research questions: the differences between Facebook adopters and non-adopters during this campaign in Romania and how this adoption or non-adoption impacted the overall election results. 885 Facebook posts were content analysed. This chapter evidences that adopting Facebook to engage the posts does not always result in improved electoral outcomes.
Article
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When Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz published their seminal book Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History in 1992, television occupied centre stage, whereas computer networks were only beginning to be used. Since the late 1990s, television and digital media have co-existed and co-evolved in still more entangled ways. In this article, I ask how the supplementing of television by a new media form, the Web, has affected the ways media events as understood by Dayan and Katz can unfold and be conceptualised. Based on a medium theory perspective where focus is more on “media” and less on “event”, I introduce the article by tracing how Dayan and Katz understand television as a medium. Then follows a brief account of the vast literature about Media Events , with a particular focus on how digital media are conceptualised. With these two sections as a stepping stone, the Web's digital features are outlined, followed by a historical analysis of the interplay of the development of the Web and a concrete media event: the Olympics from 1996 to 2016. Finally, this web historical outline is used to re-evaluate Dayan and Katz's conceptualisation of media events. The analysis is guided by three themes – liveness, control, and participation – pivotal for Dayan and Katz's understanding of media events as well as the history of the Web.
Article
Media theory helps the process of understanding the complex political communication environment. Agenda-setting research examines the transfer of topic salience from the media agenda to the public agenda. This process is important to discuss in the policy context of election campaigns. In an election campaign context, agenda-setting has been altered considerably since its early research studies by the technology that allows individuals and organizations to use social media to communicate directly to an audience and by the campaign finance structure created by the Citizens United ruling with money that provides for greater message exposure through advertising serving as an agenda-setter.
Article
The digitalisation of political communication has played a crucial role in campaigns on both national and regional levels. For many political candidates in Poland, Facebook has become the primary tool for building a successful campaign. However, campaigns for elections to regional government bodies are often associated with traditional offline media, outdoor advertising and ubiquitous leaflets. The aim of this paper is to contribute to our knowledge of electoral communications in Poland from the regional perspective. Data gathered during the 2018 online campaign for the Lower Silesian Regional Assembly examined through a semiautomated content analysis uncovered the dynamics of the professionalisation of Polish political communication and identified predictors of Facebook adoption for electoral purposes among regional candidates. Furthermore, focusing solely on Facebook data, research revealed a tendency toward the normalisation of social media campaigning and a propensity for using mobilisation communication strategies. Taken together, this paper provides new insights into the study of political campaigning in Central and Eastern Europe on social media from the perspective of political actor.
Article
Receiving Facebook post engagement – such as likes, comments and shares – is crucial in order to succeed online, perhaps especially for political actors. However, online engagement can also be hazardous, as it potentially strips the original poster of control over their messages. Previous work has shown that political actors have been rather unwilling to encourage interaction from their online supporters. However, research has also indicated a need to assess the influence of Facebook in this regard. Building on the theory of controlled interactivity, the study presented here details what is referred to as Facebook engagement strategies among Norwegian political parties on Facebook between 2009 and 2019. Combining quantitative and qualitative approaches in order to compare party and follower activity in relation to the aforementioned engagement varieties, the main findings indicate that parties and followers do not necessarily seek to interact at the same time. Furthermore, tendencies towards gamification, where parties direct user attention towards online quizzes and raffles instead of towards deliberation and political discussion, can be discerned.
Article
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This study investigates the effects of the two leading prime ministerial candidates’ personal Facebook and Twitter accounts and the effects of exposure to the general social media and web discourse in Hebrew on voters’ agendas during Israel’s April 2019 election. All the posts that appeared on the contenders’ accounts at a point in time in each of the four pre-election campaign weeks were analyzed to identify prominent issues. Social media and web content in Hebrew were also analysed over the same period. The data was compared with 2,217 responses to questionnaires completed on the four dates. The questionnaires also surveyed voters’ political orientations and the likelihood of their following the candidates’ accounts. The results revealed a significant correlation between contenders’ and voters’ agendas. However, significant differences were identified in agendas between those respondents who followed both leading candidates, those who followed a single candidate, and those who followed neither.
Article
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This article analyzes social media presence of all parties, leaders, and candidates (PLCs) during Israel’s 2015 electoral campaign, within a transformational era for online campaigns. The article adheres to the theoretical frameworks of normalisation/equalisation hypotheses and personalised politics. Its research design is based on a cross-platform analysis. Findings indicate not only a centralised personalisation trend but rather a depersonalised web sphere. Leaders are more prominent online compared to other candidates; and parties out-perform their leaders, too. Furthermore, findings point to a normalised web sphere, even when referring to new and trendy platforms, revealing that the chances of political newcomers entering the parliamentary arena are scarce.
Article
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As the political and media landscape becomes more complex, political parties and candidates worldwide are continually exploring new ways and ideas to effectively communicate their messages to their target audience. Throughout the political history of Ghana, the mass media has played an integral role in political marketing successes. However, with the advent of the digital economy, social media platforms have unfolded new possibilities for politicians to engage with citizens. The study examined the extent to which political message dissemination on social media by politicians in Ghana influence young voters’ political knowledge, efficacy, and participation. A quantitative approach was adopted and data were analysed using structural equation modelling. Findings revealed positive and significant relationships between political message dissemination on social media and political participation, political knowledge, and political efficacy of young voters. Overall, the findings revealed that political participation, especially amongst young voters, could be enhanced through the use of social media.
Chapter
Some of the most important problems of modern civilization are issues related to the functioning of contemporary democracy, such as participation of citizens and political competition. In this context, new media have become an excellent platform for information, involvement and mobilization of the electorate. It means that in the period analyzed, new functions of modern media have been developed, and they seem to differentiate significantly each presidential campaign from previous ones. Information and communication technologies have found their wide application in electoral strategies. However, this mainly concerns the last two elections. Recent presidential campaigns in Poland have become interesting for researchers in terms of new media development and their implementation in politics. The main goal of the chapter is as follows: comparative analysis of activities implemented by presidential election committees in Poland and the use of new media in presidential campaigns (information dissemination, mobilization and engagement of voters); identification of effects the use of the Internet had in presidential election campaigns, and examination of how Internet tools used for information dissemination, mobilization and engagement of the electorate have developed over the years.
Article
The responses of social media users to politicians’ different content strategies have tremendous implications for election campaigns. However, the identification of the factors that influence social media users’ responses remains a challenge. In this paper, we combine partial least squares (PLS) with a cross-validation technique to automatically identify the type of social media posts that are associated with strong responses from social media users. This approach is different from other methods that require manual identification of these associations. This study examines 534 posts and 379,880 comments on three candidates’ Facebook pages during the 2017 Hong Kong Chief Executive election. In the literature on message strategies and social media, this is one of the first studies to examine both the affective responses and cognitive expressions of social media users associated with different content strategies by politicians. The results show that the dominant candidate used his strong position to construct a strong online image, with posts generating more and longer comments and thus yielding more positive feedback. While media frames do not have any impact on either affective responses or the quality of comments, the use of videos and photographs elicits more responses. The findings contribute to the literature on online engagement and campaign strategy and support the argument that social media replicate offline power relations and offline responses to political messages.
Chapter
Existing research documents extensively explain the reasons for social media use during electoral campaigns. However, there is insufficient evidence showing that social media are indeed being used to complement traditional ways of communication. This chapter uses the diffusion of innovations theory to explain the adoption and non-adoption of Facebook (FB) by Romanian political parties during the 2019 European election campaign. The chapter addresses two research questions: the differences between Facebook adopters and non-adopters during this campaign in Romania and how this adoption or non-adoption impacted the overall election results. 885 Facebook posts were content analysed. This chapter evidences that adopting Facebook to engage the posts does not always result in improved electoral outcomes.
Article
In discussions concerning the importance of social media in the 25January revolution, a central role is given to the “Kullinā Khālid Sa‘īd” [We're all Khaled Said] Facebook page. Using an advanced data collection and extraction application called Netvizz, a research team consisting of Arabists and Media studies specialists has collected and analysed all of the posts and comments exchanged through the page. This data set allows for a systematic analysis of the page. This article offers an outline of the ideological nature of “Kullinā Khālid Sa‘īd,” with particular emphasis on the “revolutionary” period between 1 January – 11 February 2011. It argues that the page shows no evidence of political bias in the sense of explicit favoring of a political group. Rather, the page constituted a community of users who abstained from using politically factional language. Reflecting the mood and concerns of the revolution's grassroots masses, it clearly illustrates the disinclination to engage with formal politics.
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Die vorliegende Studie beschäftigt sich mit den Facebook-Kampagnen deutscher Parteien während des digitalen Wahlkampfes zur Europawahl 2019. Der Text stellt zunächst die theoretischen Grundlagen des Online- und Social-Media-Wahlkampfes dar, zeigt anschließend wesentliche Maßzahlen im Facebook-Wahlkampf und präsentiert abschließend die Ergebnisse einer automatisierten Datensammlung von Facebook-Posts und User-Reaktionen. Es zeigt sich, dass die AfD, wie auch im Bundestagswahlkampf 2017, die meisten User-Reaktionen hervorrief. Die quantitative Ergebnispräsentation wird von einer qualitativen Analyse flankiert, die die (bezogen auf die User-Reaktionen) erfolgreichsten Facebook-Posts genauer untersucht, um herauszufinden, welche Inhalte von Userinnen und Usern am meisten geteilt werden bzw. am meisten Engagement erzeugen.
Article
In this article we propose a concept of network media logic in order to discuss how online social media platforms change political communication without resorting to technological determinism or normalization. We argue that social media platforms operate with a distinctly different logic from that of traditional mass media, though overlapping with it. This is leading to different ways of producing content, distributing information and using media. By discussing the differences between traditional mass media and social media platforms in terms of production, consumption and use, we carve out the central elements of network media logic – that is, the rules/format of communication on social media platforms – and some consequences for political communication.
Article
This study uses computational methods to investigate public incivility in Facebook comments to campaign messages during the primaries of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, focusing on candidates’ posts about immigration. Specifically, we investigate the relationship between campaign messaging strategies, such as advocacy and attacks, and the presence of incivility in public comments. We find that Trump dominated both in terms of number of posts and of public conversation and was the least likely to receive uncivil comments. Attack messages by the candidates were more likely to receive uncivil comments, suggesting that campaign negativity may indeed affect how the public engages with candidates online. These findings are important because uncivil discourse may contribute to further polarize the public around the issues, which may in turn lead to more extreme views.
Article
The article analyzes the images that the British political parties posted on Facebook during the 2019 UK elections. Verbal and non-verbal resources in the visuals were examined to look at the following strategies: Broadcasting policy, Mobilization, Attacking opponents and Image management. Overall, Attacking opponents was the most common strategy for verbal and non-verbal resources. Attacks against opponents were also associated with a higher number of likes and shares. A substantial portion of text in the images was used to talk about policies, in particular by the two largest parties, the Conservative Party and Labour Party. Visuals posted on Facebook by the Labour Party generated the highest number of audience reactions. Specific differences among political parties were also analyzed and discussed.
Article
Women in developing and developed countries can still suffer from constraints on their ability to exercise their reproductive rights, being subject to gendered norms and forms of control over their bodies and encountering various difficulties to accessing healthcare services. Sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) thus continue to matter for the advancement of gender equality, whilst communications when strategically used can shape support for progressive policies. This project seeks to advance research on gender development and advocacy communications for social change. A core question asked here is how can communications be better used for advocacy on SRHR? Making use of a mixed-methods approach, this research engages with a sample of 52 feminist and health NGOs, located in both the North and the South. In-depth interviews with gender experts from the organizations were combined with a survey applied to the communication professionals, followed by content and discourse analysis of their institutional websites and social media engagement. This paper provides a condensed examination of the early research findings and core theoretical frameworks, arguing over the need to deconstruct discourses around SRHR under challenging times and concluding that NGOs need better communication strategies and practices in their advocacy communication efforts.
Article
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Today, websites operate in a modular fashion, outsourcing the surveillance and datafication of users to outside companies, along with security functions, video hosting, and so on. These third-party services (TPSs) function as key enablers of the web, with respect to functionality and the monetization of user activity. Departing from critical data studies and media systems analysis, the article contributes to understanding TPS infrastructures by placing these in a wider context of markets, cultural differences and regulation. Through a study of top-150 websites from the 28 EU countries, the article demonstrates how the use of TPSs varies between different parts of the region and different types of sites, and traces this variation to issues of language, regulatory traditions and differences in online businesses. These insights may inform current debates about surveillance capitalism and big data, by linking different forms of commodification of users’ behavioural data to broader social and cultural structures.
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This chapter explores the rationalities of politicians' social media uses in Web-campaigning in a party-based democracy. This is done from an in-depth case study of a Swedish politician, Nina Larsson, who with the help of a PR agency utilized several social media platforms in her campaign to become re-elected to the parliament in 2010. By analyzing how and for what purposes Larsson used social media in her Web-campaign, this chapter concludes that even though discourses of instrumental rationality and of communicative rationality were common to make her practices relevant, Nina primarily used social media to amplify certain offline news media texts as well as to commend and support other liberal party members. Hence, from this case, the authors conclude that Web-campaigning on social media is used for expressive purposes, to negotiate and maintain an attractive political image within the party hierarchy.
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This chapter investigates the characteristics of parties’ Websites during the campaign for the 2009 European Parliament elections. The study focuses on 5 Western and Southern European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom) and covers a total of 55 Websites, which were analyzed in the last 2 weeks before the vote. The analysis was conducted through a standard coding scheme modelled after Gibson and Ward’s (2000) seminal proposal, expanded to account for the developments in e-campaigning that have occurred in the last decade, and integrated with the results of a meta-analysis of 7 coding frames employed by previous researchers. Website features were divided into 2 main categories: those that provide information to users and those that facilitate their participation to the campaign both online and offline. The goals of this study are, first, to offer an updated mapping of the state of the art in Western European online campaigning and, second, to discover which variables affect the characteristics of party Websites. This goal is achieved through regression analyses that correlate indices measuring the amount of information and participation features in parties’ Websites with variables that measure system-level as well as party-level characteristics. Results show that system-level variables such as technological development, and aggregate levels of political support have no appreciable effect on party Website characteristics, nor do party-level variables such as resources and incumbency. Instead, ideology has a strong effect on Websites, as parties’ membership to the Socialist and Left-Libertarian families is strongly and positively correlated with both information and participation features on their Websites.
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This article investigates whether political use of the Internet affects users politically. Using a combination of log- and survey data from a study of Internet use during the Danish 2007 parliamentary election, a number of hypotheses are tested. The investigation finds that 30% of the survey respondents say they are influenced politically by their Internet use. However, they are only modestly influenced when it comes to “core values” such as party choice or important political issues, while respondents are affected more in terms of general political opinions and opinions on different candidates. Political interest is found to act as an important determinant for political activity on the Internet, and certain types of uses are found to have more profound political effects than others. Somewhat paradoxically—but in line with Zaller (1992)— those indicating they are “little” or “somewhat” interested in politics are found to be the most politically affected.
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The development and exploitation of new scientific and technological knowhow is a prime engine of economic growth. Different innovation systems have developed different approaches to this problem and have built upon varying combinations of public and private support for Research and Development (R&D) over time. In this context, inclusive approach to research and new technology intermediaries play an important brokering and entrepreneurial role. This chapter aims to understand the inclusive approach to business research, review new technologies, and their applicability to business research. The study responds to the need to gain a better understanding of possible ways to strengthen the capacity of business research to generate value and thereby bridge the gap between theory and practice. The discussion presented in this chapter offers a number of useful lessons for the development of new inclusive policy instruments to benefit the field of research in general and business research in particular.
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How do candidates for municipal office use the Internet in their campaigns, and are there differences between candidates according to the character of the constituencies and the races? This is the first a country-wide study of website usage in low-visibility political campaigns for municipal offices. Data were collected during municipal elections campaigns that took place in Israel in three cycles between November 2007 and February 2009, in 143 different municipalities and involving almost 500 candidates across Israel. 1The paper explores the characteristics of municipal campaigning, including the scope of website usage, the features available in candidates' websites, variables predicting website usage, and the perceptions of candidates regarding websites’ effectiveness. While Websites were used by half of the candidates, they tended to be static and include very few interactive features. The characteristics of the constituencies and the races were correlated with the scope of Website usage by contenders.
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This chapter investigates the characteristics of parties’ Websites during the campaign for the 2009 European Parliament elections. The study focuses on 5 Western and Southern European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom) and covers a total of 55 Websites, which were analyzed in the last 2 weeks before the vote. The analysis was conducted through a standard coding scheme modelled after Gibson and Ward’s (2000) seminal proposal, expanded to account for the developments in e-campaigning that have occurred in the last decade, and integrated with the results of a meta-analysis of 7 coding frames employed by previous researchers. Website features were divided into 2 main categories: those that provide information to users and those that facilitate their participation to the campaign both online and offline. The goals of this study are, first, to offer an updated mapping of the state of the art in Western European online campaigning and, second, to discover which variables affect the characteristics of party Websites. This goal is achieved through regression analyses that correlate indices measuring the amount of information and participation features in parties’ Websites with variables that measure system-level as well as party-level characteristics. Results show that system-level variables such as technological development, and aggregate levels of political support have no appreciable effect on party Website characteristics, nor do party-level variables such as resources and incumbency. Instead, ideology has a strong effect on Websites, as parties’ membership to the Socialist and Left-Libertarian families is strongly and positively correlated with both information and participation features on their Websites.
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Studies of online campaigning tend to focus on the supply side: the way political parties communicate and campaign using the Internet. This chapter explores the online presences of the main candidates and their parties who stood in the 2012 French presidential election. The research focuses not only on the supply side but also explores demand, utilising data from the Mediapolis survey to ascertain what citizens search for online and in particular what citizens seeking help with their voter decisions seek online. The data shows that citizens are provided with a rich online experience during election campaigns. Information is presented in engaging ways and candidates attempt to mobilise their supporters and offer various opportunities to interact with the campaign and other Website visitors. Interaction is augmented in particular by the use of social networking sites. Citizens, however, appear to mostly go online to find detailed information on the policies and programmes of the candidates. There appears little call for engaging communication, interactive opportunities, or details on the personal lives or personalities of the candidates. The data may, therefore, suggest that information may need to be packaged for accessibility and presented in a way that allows voters to make up their own minds, rather than following the norms of corporate sales campaign Websites.
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Twenty-five years after the first emergence of the Internet in its World Wide Web format, the nexus between the digital sphere and the political communication sphere is no longer disputed. This paper examines the vibrant changes of the relationships between the digital sphere and political communication from the mid-1990s till today. We highlight four stages in this evolving linkage, the last of which is still going through its initial formation process. We will examine this fourth phase as a continuation of an evolutionary process, with a special focus on the ‘fake news’ phenomenon. Finally, we suggest that the shifts currently underway may warrant a reexamination by communication scholars of early communication theories.
Article
Social media is now ubiquitously used by political campaigns, but less attention has been given to public discussions that take place on candidates’ free public accounts on social media. Also unclear is whether there is a relationship between campaign messaging and the tone of public comments. To address this gap, this article analyzes public comments on Facebook accounts of candidates Trump and Clinton during the US election presidential debates in 2016. We hypothesize that attack messages posted by the candidates predict uncivil reactions by the public and that the public is more likely to be uncivil when attacking candidates. We use content analysis, supervised machine learning, and text mining to analyze candidates’ posts and public comments. Our results suggest that Clinton was the target of substantially more uncivil comments. Negative messages by the candidates are not associated with incivility by the public, but comments are significantly more likely to be uncivil when the public is attacking candidates. These results suggest that the public discourse around political campaigns might be less affected by what campaigns post on social media than by the public’s own perceptions and feelings toward the candidates.
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This chapter investigates the link between young adults' attention to campaign information on offline and online media and their knowledge about political facts and candidate issues. The findings, based on a unique, three-wave panel survey conducted during the 2012 U.S. presidential election, show that attention to campaign information on offline sources, such as television, hard-copy newspapers, and radio, was not significantly related to political knowledge. Instead, young adults' attention to online sources played a more important role. Specifically, political knowledge levels were significantly and positively linked to attention to campaign information in online newspapers and television campaign websites. In contrast, attention to campaign information on social media, particularly Facebook and Google+, was negatively related to political knowledge levels during the fall campaign period. Therefore, this study suggests that certain forms of online media serve as a drain on political knowledge whereas attention to other digital outlets can serve as hubs of information.
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In Malawi, the judiciary rolled out an electronic case management system in 2015 in response to the ongoing public sector reforms being championed by the Malawi Government. In this study, we employed the information systems (IS) success model to systematically investigate the benefits that an electronic case management system has brought about to the judiciary of Malawi. Specifically, three themes are pursued as follows: the services offered through an electronic case management system in the judiciary of Malawi; benefits of an electronic case management system; and challenges affecting the use of an electronic case management system in the judiciary of Malawi. Methodologically, the study is guided by a survey design and a questionnaire was used to collect data from various staff in the judiciary including judges, court clerks, court registrars, and information technology personnel. The study reveals that the implementation of an electronic case management system has impacted positively on the security of court files by easing the tracking and retrieving of case files thereby contributing to efficiency in justice delivery. However, the implementation of an electronic case management system has not been spared from challenges, which include frequent loss of network and poor Internet connection.
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The present article aims to expand scholarship on the political role of social media by focusing on the case of Facebook and the self-determination claims of Turkish Cypriots vis-à-vis Turkey. Drawing upon a virtual ethnography of relevant Facebook sites and groups, this article scrutinises whether social media offer an innovative public platform for the politics of self-determination or on-line claims are in reality formed and negotiated in the same manner as the offline ones. The article concludes that Turkish Cypriots’ Facebook activism may very well be for strengthening their community, shielding their distinct characteristics from mainland Turkey and raising their self-esteem, rather than indicating demands for complete autonomy in the traditional political sense of the word and/or statehood.
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