This paper analyses changing strategies of election campaign communication in a rapidly evolving media environment, characterized by the rise of digital communication channels and online social networks as new tools of political campaigning. Using an expert survey to campaign managers of sixty eight political parties within twelve European nations, representing both old and new EU member states, the study investigates the perceived importance of different types of communication platforms in meeting campaign objectives, especially with regards to differences between new and direct modes of campaigning in comparison to traditional campaign channels. The attributed significance to these various channels is then analysed against a range of variables on macro (country) level as well as meso (party) level. The results suggest that while some differences can be observed in regards to adoption of particular types of social media between individual parties as well as between new and old EU member states (e.g. Facebook is seen as more important in younger democracies), overall we can see a relatively high level of homogeneity in strategies for campaign communication in the sample. The data points to the embedding of new communication platforms within election campaign strategies across most nations and parties; this indicates that the move towards "hypermedia" campaign style, integrating both old and new campaign tools and communication platforms, is now becoming a standard feature of professional campaigning in Europe.

In recent years, political parties have reacted to some far-reaching transformations in their media and sociocultural environment. Respective changes and adaptations, often summarized under the catchword of ‘professionalization’, become most vivid during election campaigns. However, parties’ election campaign professionalism has seldom been ‘measured’, and it has mostly been exemplified in single case studies so far. Against this backdrop, the article presents an empirical test of the party-centered theory of professionalization. It is an intertemporal comparison of political parties’ campaign structures and strategies on the occasion of the two most recent European and national parliamentary elections in Germany. The analyses provide empirical evidence for professionalization-related changes. Plus, it is demonstrated that transformations take place at two different campaign levels, the first-order national and the second-order European level. These exemplary results should be taken into account in future empirical analyses that might reflect our methodological approach, too.

International audienceFaced with some fundamental changes in the socio-cultural, political and media environment, political parties in post-industrialized democracies have started to initiate substantial transformations of both their organizational structures and communicative practices. Those innovations, described as professionalization, become most obvious during election campaigns. In recent times, the number of empirical studies measuring the degree of political parties’ campaign professionalism has grown. They have relied on a broad spectrum of indicators derived from theory which have not been tested for their validity. For the first time, we put these indicators to a ‘reality check’ by asking top-ranked party secretaries and campaign managers in 12 European countries to offer their perceptions of professional election campaigning. Furthermore, we investigate whether any differences in understanding professionalism among party campaign practitioners can be explained by macro (country) and meso (party) factors. By and large, our results confirm the validity of most indicators applied in empirical studies on campaign professionalism so far. There are some party- and country-related differences in assessing campaign professionalism too, but the influence of most factors on practitioners’ evaluations is weak. Therefore, we conclude that largely there is a far-reaching European Union-wide common understanding of professional election campaigning

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