Abstract
Modern-day party politics happen on two grounds: the offline sphere and the online sphere. It is the primary understanding of this chapter that both spheres complement each other. We therefore focus our contribution on governing parties and help to close this gap between online and offline communication and organisation by asking: How do conservative, governing parties deploy social media over a number of successful election campaigns? We explore whether there are tactical patterns or tendencies of media presence between different party channels during campaign and normal times with a longitudinal approach. Second, we introduce a multi-modal comparative research design and deliver theoretical arguments for the cases considered. Third, we conduct a multi-channel analysis of political parties’ online presence with a focus on party websites and Facebook fan pages.
Jasmin Fitzpatrick—Alphabetical order, but both authors contributed equally to this chapter. Isabelle Borucki was responsible for parts of the theory, case design and method, and the Facebook study and analysis. Jasmin Fitzpatrick developed the research question, assumptions, literature review, theory, and parts of the case design, and conducted the website analysis.
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Notes
- 1.
This aspect is especially important for the analysis of cross-media communication.
- 2.
Out of the four aspects, this is probably the most difficult to identify. Lilleker et al. (2011, p. 198) point to visual and audio elements embedded in the website in order to make visitors revisit the page. This type of content is more entertaining. In marketing literature, ‘engagement is defined as the process of developing a cognitive, affective and behavioural [sic!] commitment to an active relationship with the website’ (Demangeot & Broderick, 2016, p. 820). Therefore, we coded elements that we regard as intended to create a relationship with the visitor.
- 3.
Gauja (2015) points out that Mair’s work leads to a specific path for parties: instead of relying on members, they search for alternative sources to cover their demands and remain in place. This cartel party thesis (Katz & Mair, 1995) has widely influenced party research; however, a different perspective allows for a new understanding of parties’ adaption processes. Gauja (2015) suggests connecting party organisation research with participation research. We follow this thought.
- 4.
- 5.
Political Action Committees.
- 6.
In contrast to the quasi in vitro implementation of web-based technologies that small parties with a moderate number of visitors and media attention can conduct without too much turmoil.
- 7.
These data were retrieved from https://www.internetworldstats.com/stats4.htm#europe. Accessed 31 Oct 2018.
- 8.
We decided to distinguish between non-display of an aspect (0), a display as one element on the website (1) and a prominent display (2), for example in connection with a picture, video, link or an emphasis by size or colour, and to weight these factors accordingly.
- 9.
We thank Tatevik Tophoven-Sedrakyan and Maximilian Wilshaus for their support during the coding process.
- 10.
These include user-added emoticons and likes. Engagement could be displayed as a ratio or as a sum of all activities around posts, but without knowing the exact amounts of fans or fan pages, this is not valid and was not attempted with this data.
- 11.
‘Voting Conservative on 22nd May is the only way to get real change in Europe. Watch our new film, share the link with your friends and family, and if you’re free this weekend, sign up for one of our campaign Action Days: http://www.conservatives.com/actionday’. Facebook post from 24 April 2014: https://www.facebook.com/8807334278/posts/10152237696409279. Accessed 29 April 2019.
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Funding
The work of Isabelle Borucki’s research group is funded by the Digital Society research program, funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the German State of North Rhine-Westphalia (grant number 005-1709-0003).
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Borucki, I., Fitzpatrick, J. (2021). Tactical Web Use in Bumpy Times—A Comparison of Conservative Parties’ Digital Presence. In: Barberà, O., Sandri, G., Correa, P., Rodríguez-Teruel, J. (eds) Digital Parties. Studies in Digital Politics and Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78668-7_13
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