Conclusion

The final chapter reviews the key findings of the book, and reflects on the future direction of digital campaigning. The main conclusions are threefold: (1) Developments in digital campaigning follow a similar pattern across countries. A four-stage cycle of experimentation, standardization, community building, and individual voter mobilization is clearly evident across the book’s four case studies. (2) The pace of that development and countries’ current positions differ according to regime-level characteristics and levels of national technological advancement. Notably, parties and individual candidates can also play a significant role in shaping that process. In particular, mainstream leftist parties and some of the more prominent minor parties serve as key catalysts for change. (3) The “mainstreaming” of digital technology is fostering the growth of a new type of campaign operative—the apolitico—and a new condition of hypernormality in which power is centralized organizationally and systemically to an unprecedented degree.

The Trendsetter

This chapter examines developments in digital campaigning in the United States during the period 1994–2012. It does so by reviewing the findings from the secondary literature, and conducting original analysis of web content and national survey data. These data sources build a picture of key changes in the supply and demand for digital campaigning in the United States and particularly whether they fit the four-phase model of development. The results show that the model fits, and that US parties and voters were considerably faster in engaging with web campaigning than was the case elsewhere. This enthusiasm appeared to be driven, to an extent, by the more conducive regulatory environment and also innovation among left-wing organizations and particularly the Democrats from the middle of the first decade of the 2000s. Their ability to sustain activist involvement in their online cause beyond 2008, however, is challenged by the author’s findings.

Digital Campaigning across Space

This chapter examines developments in digital campaigning in comparative perspective. It does so using survey data from Wave 4 of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) to measure the extent of digital voter contact occurring in eighteen countries (2011–2015). Based on the understanding that extensive voter mobilization is a key feature of a country’s entry into phase IV digital campaigning, the authors infer which nations have progressed more rapidly through the four phases, and are thus most advanced in their use of digital campaign tools. Using this measure, they find that the United States is the most advanced nation and Thailand the least. They investigate the rankings more systematically using multilevel modeling techniques, and find that presidential elections and higher internet penetration rates are most predictive of higher rates of digital campaign contact. The results are helpful in building expectations about the digital campaign performance of the four national case studies.

A Review of the Literature

This chapter reviews the growing body of literature that has emerged on the subject of digital campaigns since they first emerged as a web- and email-based activity in the mid-1990s. It does so chronologically and shows how, when viewed in the aggregate and from a historical perspective, these studies form a narrative that maps onto the four distinct phases of development outlined in Chapter 1. Thus, early studies largely describe a period of experimentation in most countries, while subsequent work in the late 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s reveals a shift toward standardization in practice across parties and countries. Analyses from the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century focus largely on online political community-building efforts by web campaigns, while the most recent work examines how digital tools are increasingly being used to intensify micro-targeting of voters

Introduction

This chapter provides a general introduction and overview to the book. It sets out the main contention that digital technology has moved from being an afterthought for campaigns to being at the core of current practice, and how this has occurred over a twenty-year period. It introduces the four-phase model of campaign change that anchors the book, and structures the analysis in the subsequent chapters. It explains the concepts of apoliticos and hypernormality that inform the key conclusions of the study. Finally, it presents a summary of the chapters and explains how they develop and how they apply the four-phase model to the four national case studies.

The Late Bloomer

This chapter examines developments in digital campaigning in France during the period 1994–2012. It does so by reviewing the findings from the secondary literature, and conducting original analysis of web content and national survey data. These data sources build a picture of key changes in the supply and demand for digital campaigning in France, and particularly whether they fit the four-phase model of development. The results show that French parties and voters were slower than their UK and Australian counterparts in engaging with web campaigning. The inertia was due in part to the presence of the rival digital infrastructure Minitel and extensive regulations governing campaign communication in France. The direct importation of US expertise from the Obama 2008 campaign saw a rapid acceleration of party usage, with the Socialists proving the most enthusiastic adopters. The response of voters, however, still proved less enthusiastic than for the other cases studied.

The Early Bloomer

This chapter examines developments in digital campaigning in Australia from 1994 to 2013. It does so by reviewing the findings from the secondary literature, and conducting original analysis of web content and national survey data. These data sources build a picture of key changes in the supply and demand for digital campaigning in Australia and particularly whether they fit the four-phase model of development. The results show that digital campaigning has broadly followed the anticipated cycle with parties making a strong early start. However, efforts slowed considerably following a highly publicized failure by prominent right-wing state politician and web campaigner Jeff Kennett. Much of the subsequent innovation appears to have been driven by the mainstream left and also the non-party online activist group GetUp!

The Four-Phase Model of Digital Campaign Development

This chapter sets out the core argument of the book, which is that over the past two decades digital technology has moved from the margins to the mainstream of campaign operations, and in doing so has fundamentally changed how elections are conducted. This process of transformation is broken down into four main phases: experimentation; standardization and professionalization; community building and activist mobilization; and individual voter mobilization. The theoretical framework for the model and its basis in the work of early e-democracy is presented. The phases are then described in more detail, using a set of common criteria that focus on the power distribution within and between campaigns, the technology and tools used, and the primary goal and target for the campaign. The four phases are summarized in tabular form.

The Slow Burner

This chapter examines developments in digital campaigning in the United Kingdom from 1994 to 2015. It does so by reviewing the findings from the secondary literature, and conducting original analysis of web content and national survey data. These data sources build a picture of key changes in the supply and demand for digital campaigning in the United Kingdom, and particularly whether they fit the four-phase model of development. The results show that UK digital campaigning has followed the anticipated cycle in a largely steady and incremental manner. An early phase of experimentation and standardization yielded to more strategic attempts at community building by 2010, and the 2015 election saw signs of entry into phase IV. At the party level, the Conservatives emerge as most aggressive in pushing the new forms of individual online targeting, while Labour and the smaller parties concentrate more on organic phase III–style indirect mobilization.