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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Tactical Web Use in Bumpy Times—A Comparison of Conservative Parties’ Digital Presence

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description

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.