Transcript Rachel Gibson

‘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
Democracy
October 21-23, Kyiv, Ukraine
Overview of presentation
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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:
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Campaign communication & management
 Party Competition
 Effects on the electorate
New media and party campaign
communication.
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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.
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Labelled as ‘Americanised’, ‘Modernised’ ‘Political Marketing’
‘Capital-intensive’ (Butler and Ranney, 1992; Swanson and
Mancini, 1996; Newman, 1999; Plasser, 2000, Farrell and
Webb, 2000)
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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?
New media and campaign management
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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.
New ICTs and party competition: rebalancing the system?
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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?
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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)
However…
Certain smaller players do ‘punch above their weight’.
Green parties generally seen to do well.
 Even if new ICTs don’t 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.
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$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. - D’Alessio (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)
Conclusions: How has the new media
affected parties in the electoral arena?
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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!
Watch this space…
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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.
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.
Evidence on the question of how ecampaigns affects vote choice.
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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
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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.
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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.
Web 1.0