Nara Chandrababu Naidu's Visionary Policies For Andhra Pradesh's Development
Web campaigning and European Parliament elections 2011. Presentation held at the European People's Party, Belgrade, October 2011
1. Mediated and networked politics
Social media and the Internet as
mediators between politicians and voters
Presentation held at the
EPP campaign managers meeting
20-21 October 2011
Dr. Maurice Vergeer
Department of communication
7. Pre-modern campaigns
Tools
Print media, rallies,
meetings, foot soldiers
Mode / style
Labor-intensive,
interpersonal, amateur
Orientation to
Mobilizing, voters = loyal
voter
partisans
Internal power
Local-centric
distribution
8. Pre-modern campaigns
Modern campaigns
Print media, rallies,
Broadcast television news,
meetings, foot soldiers
news advertisements, polls
Labor-intensive,
Capital-intensive,
interpersonal, amateur
mediated, indirect
Orientation to
Mobilizing, voters = loyal
Converting and mobilizing,
voter
partisans
voters = loyal partisans
Tools
Mode / style
and floating
Internal power
distribution
Local-centric
National-centric
9. Pre-modern campaigns
Modern campaigns
Professional
campaigns
Tools
Broadcast television news, Internet, direct mail
meetings, foot soldiers
news advertisements, polls
Labor-intensive,
Capital-intensive,
Capital-intensive,
interpersonal, amateur
Mode / style
Print media, rallies,
mediated, indirect
marketed, targeted,
continuous
Orientation to
Mobilizing, voters = loyal
Converting and mobilizing, Interactive, voters =
voter
partisans
voters = loyal partisans
consumers
and floating
Internal power
distribution
Local-centric
National-centric
Local-/national centric,
bifurcation
10. Party sites compared across countries
Pippa Norris (2001)
Web feature analysis
•Information function
•Communication function
Developmental explanations
• Technological development
• Human development
• Political development
11. • Kluver, Foot, Schneider & Jankowski (2007)
• Web sphere analysis
- Political parties
- Labour unions
- NGOs
• European focus
• Party sites were best equipped
12. • Advanced and extended replication of web feature analysis
13. Candidate websites
European Parliament elections 2009
Sample: 17 countries
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Austria
Belgium
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Estonia
France
Germany
Greece
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Hungary
Ireland
The Netherlands
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Slovakia
Sweden
United Kingdom
14. Methodology
• All party and campaign websites
• Random sampling of candidates with websites, but . . .
• Always including the top three candidates per party
• 288 party and campaign websites
• 738 candidate websites
• All websites were archived digitally
• Elaborate coding scheme
• Coding by local experts
• Advanced analyses
- factor analysis, hierarchical linear models
15. Four distinct dimensions of website features
• Informing
• Personal Reputation
• Connecting & Sharing
• Audio-visualisations
34. Twitter
Several indicators
Number of people following the candidate (followers)
Number of people followed by candidate (following)
Number of Tweets (number of original messages)
Number of replies
43. Subscribing to Twitter
• Party age is unrelated to Twitter adoption
• Ideology is unrelated to Twitter adoption
• Candidate rank on election list is related (higher ranked ->
more adoption)
• External shock is related: loss of seats if prior elections ->
more adoption)
• Internal shock (leadership uncertainty) is unrelated
44. Subscribing to Twitter
• Male and female candidates adopt Twitter as likely
• Younger candidates adopt Twitter more likely
45. The number of tweets
• The longer a candidate is subscribed to Twitter, the more
Tweets s/he sends
46. The number of followers
• The older the party is, the more followers the candidate has
• The higher ranked the candidate, the more followers s/he
has
• The more seats the party won in the last elections, the more
followers the candidate has
• Candidates from parties with leadership uncertainties have
more followers
• Candidates who are subscribed longer, have more
followers
47. The number of following
• The lower ranked candidates follow more other people on
Twitter
• Candidates from parties who lost in prior elections follow
more others on Twitter
• Candidates from parties with leadership uncertainty follow
less others on Twitter
• Longtime subscribers to Twitter follow more others on
Twitter
48. The number of reciprocated relations
(follower and following)
• Candidates of parties that have leadership uncertainties
have less reciprocated relations on Twitter
• Longtime subscribers have more reciprocated relations in
Twitter
50. Research questions
1. To what degree do candidates and the public engage in
public discussions on the Web?
2. To what extent is do parties engage in online
communications?
3. Do discussions take place within the boundaries of the
party (i.e. many small ideological public spheres
consisting of homogeneous networks) or are they
crossing party boundaries?
51. • All candidates
• All tweets in 40 days prior to Election Day
• Inner circle
All tweets of Twitter users that follow candidates
• Outer circle
Twitter users , not following candidates,
but who can be (re)tweeted to
52. Findings
• All messages: n=4,451,128 sent out by the
candidates and the inner circle of the candidates
• nearly half of all messages is undirected, i.e. sent
to no one in particular.
• About a third is sent to people on Twitter not
following any candidates (i.e. outer circle).
• Little over a sixth of the messages are sent to
people following at least one candidate,
55. 50
Number of replies by politicians during last
40 days of campaign
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
CDA
pvda
SP
VVD
PVV
GL
CU
D66
PvdD
SGP
NN
TON
MenS
HN
P1
Piraten
76. Thank you for your attention
Maurice Vergeer
Web: www.mauricevergeer.nl
Email: m.vergeer@maw.ru.nl
Twitter: @mauricevergeer
77. Sources
• Hermans, L. & Vergeer, M. (forthcoming). Personalisation in e-campaigning
Cross national comparison of personalisation strategies used on candidate
websites in EP-elections 2009. New media & Society.
• Vergeer, M. Hermans, L. & Sams, S. (2011). Is the voter only a tweet away?
Micro-blogging during the 2009 European parliament Election campaign in the
Netherlands, First Monday, 16(8).
• Vergeer, M., & Hermans, L. (2011). New public deliberations. Twitter as a new
campaign tool for public discussions. Paper presented at World Association of
Public Opinion Research (Wapor).
• Vergeer, M., Hermans, L. & Sams, S. (in press). Online social networks and
micro-blogging in political campaigning: The exploration of a new campaign tool
and a new campaign style. Party Politics.
• Vergeer, M., Hermans, L., & Cunha, C. (forthcoming). Political parties,
candidates, and Web campaigning in the 2009 European Parliament elections. A
decade of cross-national comparative website-feature analysis
• Vergeer, M., Lim, Y.S., & Park, H.W. (2011). Mediated relations: new methods to
study online social capital. Asian Journal of Communication, October 2011 issue
78. • Vergeer, M., & Hermans, L. Campaigning on Twitter. Twitter as a campaign tool
in the general elections 2010 in the Netherlands. (submitted for publication)
• Kluver R, Jankowski NW, Foot K and Schneider SM (eds.) (2007) The Internet
and National Elections. A Comparative Study of Web Campaigning: London:
Routledge.
• Norris P (2001) Digital Divide? Civic Engagement, Information Poverty and the
Internet Worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Van Os R., Jankowski NW and Vergeer M (2007). Political communication
about Europe on the Internet during the 2004 European Parliament election
campaign in nine EU member states. European Societies 9(5): 755-775.