This document analyzes political parties' use of websites and social media during recent elections in Germany, the UK, Poland, and France. It finds that parties have adopted a more interactive approach online, moving beyond just broadcasting messages. Parties now focus on persuasion and mobilizing existing supporters through their websites and social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Larger, more popular parties tend to have larger online followings and communities compared to smaller parties. The size of a party's online following on social media seems correlated with its overall level of electoral support.

1. Broadcasting to the masses or
building communities:
Polish political parties’ online performance during
2011 elections in international perspective
Karolina Koc-Michalska (Science-Po, France)
Darren G. Lilleker (Bournemouth University, UK)

2. Web campaigning in context
• Largely an adjunct of offline campaigning
– Top-down, broadcasting model
– Shovelware/Brochureware (Foot & Schneider,
2006; Kluver et al, 2007; Ward et al, 2008)
• Parties/Candidates avoid interactivity to:
– Prevent adaptation of the message
– Avoid having to be specific (Stromer-Galley, 2000)

3. The Obama Effect
• A new model of web campaigning?
• Huge opportunities to co-create
• Focus though on mobilisation and
crowdsourcing brand ambassadors
• Parties in Germany 2009 and UK 2010
replicated in part some of the tools with less
real-time interaction allowed (Lilleker &
Jackson, 2011)

4. New platforms for campaigns
• Social networking platforms offer new spaces
for corporate and political communication
• Spaces where the people are (the agora or
town hall of the future?)
• Within these platforms communities can grow
• Community size can be a factor of the
communication frequency (Lilleker & Koc-
Michalska, 2012)

5. The Elections 2.0 project
• Mapped the use of the Internet 2007 onwards
• Baseline studies France 2007 (Lilleker & Malagon,
2010); US 2008 & UK 2010 (Lilleker & Jackson,
2011); Germany 2009 (Lilleker, Jackson &
Schweitzer, 2011)
• Extended to Poland 2011 and France 2012
• Coding and categorisation of website features
and links
• This paper uses the data that is common for the
coding sheets of the post-Obama contests.

6. The normalisation of web campaigning
30
Minor
Minor
25
Minor
Minor
20
15
10
5
0
Germany 09 UK 2010 Poland 2011 France 2012

7. Persuading or Involving?
As a percentage
90 of features
within each
80 category
70
60
50
Persuasion
40
Mobilisation
30
20
10
0
Germany 2009 UK 2010 Poland 2011 France 2012

8. Social Campaigning?
120
100
80
60 Social Network
Twitter
40
20
0
Germany 2009 UK 2010 Poland 2011 France 2012

9. Community size
50000
40000
30000
20000 Following
10000 SD
0
Germany
UK 2010
2009 Poland
2011 France
2012

10. Community size and vote share
Spearman’s Tb Approx Sig.
Correlation
Coefficient
SNS .463 2.276 0.35
Twitter .524 2.685 0.15

11. The evolution of web campaigning
2007-
• Web campaigning is now one of the normal rituals of
electioneering
• Strategically, political webmasters have recognised who
their likely visitors are and so target involved
information seekers (with persuasion) and existing
supporters (to involve them)
• Social campaigning, using social networks and Twitter
is de rigeur among major parties
• Political fanpages are taking off, with large parties
attracting a large following.
• The size of followings seems to be a function of their
support more generally.

12. Reflections on web campaigning
• The probably likely impact is through third
party endorsement
– Hence mobilisation a key strategy
• While there is equalisation in terms of usage
within nations, there is not in reach
– Smaller (less popular or niche) parties tend to get
smaller followings online