0000000000010745
AUTHOR
Simon Kruschinski
Restrictions on data-driven political micro-targeting in Germany
The revitalisation of canvassing in recent elections is strongly related to campaigns´ growing possibilities for analysing voter data to gain knowledge about their constituents, identifying their most likely voters and serving up personalised messages through individual conversations. The research literature about political micro-targeting hardly ever focusses on campaigns in parliamentary democracies with strict data protection laws. Based on in-depth expert interviews we introduce a framework of constraints in strategic political communication and reveal several restrictions on the macro, meso and micro levels which hinder the implementation of sophisticated data strategies in Germany. We…
Back to the roots?! Der datengestützte Tür-zu-Tür-Wahlkampf in politischen Wahlkampagnen
Trotz der mannigfaltigen Moglichkeiten, die soziale Online-Netzwerke und klassische Massenmedien zur Wahleransprache bieten, greifen jungste Kampagnen auf ein Wahlkampfinstrument zuruck, das vor allem in vormodernen Wahlkampfen zum Einsatz kam und auf den direkten interpersonellen Dialog mit den Burgern setzt: den Tur-zu-Tur-Wahlkampf. Als Symbiose aus datengestutzter Targeting-Technik, technologischer Infrastruktur und direkter interpersoneller Wahleransprache lasst sich die ‚Renaissance‘ dieses scheinbar antiquierten Wahlkampfinstruments durch gesellschaftliche Wandlungsprozesse und durch Entwicklungen im Bereich der Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien erklaren. Auf Basis der int…
Reaching Out to the Europeans. Political Parties’ Facebook Strategies of Issue Ownership and the Second-Order Character of European Election Campaigns
The European Election campaign 2019 enjoyed heightened attention in the European and global public due to the recent emergence of populist actors, new parties, and large European issues such as immigration, climate change, and Brexit. Starting theoretically from the issue ownership theory, shareworthiness, and the second-order character of European elections, the study at hand investigates the campaigns of 69 parties from 9 countries on Facebook as one of the current central spheres of electoral contest. Facebook enables parties to provide users with selected issues considered advantageous for themselves. The number of posts’ shares indicates whether the parties manage to reach out to the v…
Political Advertising on Facebook
Parties have limited opportunities to determine the audiences of their organic communication. However, Facebook offers sophisticated advertising possibilities which enable parties to sponsor their organic messages in order to target them at selected and narrow segments of the electorate. Information on advertising activity was not available in Europe until Facebook has launched its ‘Ad Library’ right before the 2019 European Parliamentary election which provided access to all political ads and its metadata. By drawing on this data, our chapter will advance on the previous country chapters and investigate parties’ advertising activity in the 12 analysed countries with a specific focus on spo…
Looking over the channel: The balance of media coverage about the “refugee crisis” in Germany and the UK
Abstract This study compares the balance of newspaper and television news coverage about migration in two countries that were differently affected by the so-called “refugee crisis” in 2015 in terms of the geopolitical involvement and numbers of migrants being admitted. Based on a broad consensus among political elites, Germany left its borders open and received about one million migrants mainly from Syria during 2015. In contrast, the conservative British government was heavily attacked by oppositional parties for closing Britain’s borders and, thus, restricting immigration. These different initial situations led to remarkable differences between the news coverage in both countries. In line…
European Issues, but National Campaigning of German Parties
Germany is a political and economic heavyweight in the European Union and political issues that demand for European solutions rather than national policies, like migration or climate change, gained importance on the German public agenda in recent years. Nonetheless, EP elections regularly have the status of second-order elections when it comes to campaigning efforts as well as voter turnout. In 2019, the election turnout was extraordinarily high, and as this chapter shows, German parties focused on political issues mostly addressing the EU level. Implementing successful Facebook campaigns by initiating user engagement and emphasising issues ‘owned’ by their parties, the Greens and the right…
Populism, Its Prevalence, and Its Negative Influence on Democratic Institutions
Populism is presented as a severe challenge to democracies as it delegitimises the institutions and processes on which democratic society is built. The infectious nature of populism within a system drives a shift in the public mood. The authors investigate this phenomenon through a content analysis of party posts on Facebook during the 2019 European parliamentary elections across 12 countries. They find almost a quarter of posts contain some form of populism, with anti-elitism the most common trope. Populist appeals are most likely to accompany critiques of labour and social policy, labelling elites or minority groups as causing inequalities which disadvantage the ordinary people. Both form…
In varietate concordia?! Political parties’ digital political marketing in the 2019 European Parliament election campaign
This article provides the first comprehensive analysis of how parties across 28 countries use digital political marketing on Facebook by drawing on the example of the 2019 European Parliament election. We introduce a theoretical model of political Facebook marketing and compare the paid media activity (sponsored posts, ads) of 186 parties to their owned media (posts) and earned media (user reactions, comments, shares). Our results concerning cross-country patterns indicate that differences in European parties’ paid media activity exist and only a few parties leverage sophisticated targeting strategies. Regarding temporal dynamics, we find that paid media is used to supplement owned media du…