The (surprisingly interesting) story of e-mail in the 2016 presidential election

Epstein, Ben; Broxmeyer, Jeffrey D.

doi:10.1080/19331681.2020.1755762

Cited by 9 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…In general, digital media have become crucial for the daily working practices of non-elite campaign workers all over the world. This is especially true for 'mundane' tools -such as email (Epstein & Broxmeyer, 2020;Nielsen, 2011). These shifts are easy to forget but maybe matter more than the adaption of the hottest app of the moment.…”

Section: Organizational Structures and Work Routinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Parties and campaigns have answered the challenges of transformed communication environments by becoming information providers themselves. For this purpose, they use dedicated web presences, such as websites or social media profiles (Vaccari, 2013), as well as targeted approaches, such as email or online ads (Epstein & Broxmeyer, 2020;Fowler et al, 2020;Ridout et al, 2021aRidout et al, , 2021b. As a result, parties and campaigns may establish dedicated news desks that produce dedicated multimedia content optimized for distribution through varying digital media channels.…”

Section: Achieving Presence In the Information Space And Reachmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Digital campaigning: how digital media change the work of parties and campaign organizations and impact elections

Jungherr¹

2023

Research Handbook on Digital Sociology

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Digital media have come to play an important role in the work of political parties and campaign organizations all over the world. Examples for the use of digital media in the United States (US) like Barack Obama's presidential campaigns of 2008 and 2012 and Donald Trump's campaign of 2016 dominate the public imagination. At the same time, it is important to recognize that the uses of digital media in politics vary considerably depending on campaign contexts or resources. This demands for the analysis of the use of digital media by parties and campaign organizations in varying temporal and international contexts instead of expecting the examples from the US to apply globally.The focus of this chapter lies on the discussion of how digital media have impacted the work of political parties, especially the way they run political campaigns. Political parties are at the heart of democracies and although they face persistent challenges regarding membership and public trust, they are crucial institutions connecting the people with political elites and the government (Dalton et al., 2011). This renders the impact of digital media on parties' ability to connect with voters one of the crucial channels through which digital media impact democracy (Jungherr et al., 2020, pp. 158-178).Digital media have a strong impact on politics beyond parties. They have changed the work of non-governmental organizations (Bimber et al., 2012;Karpf, 2012), extended the toolkits and repertoires available to activists and protestors (Bennett & Segerberg, 2013;Earl & Kimport, 2011;Jackson et al., 2020), and provided new forms of political participation (Theocharis & van Deth, 2018). These are important changes. But the specific institutional, organizational, and participatory characteristics of political parties deviate strongly from these other political organizations and forms of political participation. This makes the analysis and discussion about the role and impact of digital media in the work of political parties an important topic in its own right. Of course, this does not mean that the patterns identified in the broader discussion on the impact of digital media on political organization, participation, and activism do not also inform the study of political parties.By now, digital tools available to parties, elites, and people in their pursuit of politics and political information have reached a staggering variety. In the past, it was possible to discuss the role of 'the internet' in politics, 'social media', or specific services like Facebook or Twitter. Today, the variety of available services and their differentiated uses and functions challenges these unified approaches. Instead, I will use the term 'digital media' in order to capture the breadth of this phenomenon in the work of political parties. Here, I follow the

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Section: Organizational Structures and Work Routinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Achieving Presence In the Information Space And Reachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital campaigning: how digital media change the work of parties and campaign organizations and impact elections

Jungherr¹

2023

Research Handbook on Digital Sociology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In general, digital media have become crucial for the daily working practices of non-elite campaign workers all over the world. This is especially true for "mundane" tools -such as e-mail (Epstein & Broxmeyer, 2020;Nielsen, 2011). These shifts are easy to forget but maybe matter more than the adaption of the hottest app of the moment.…”

Section: Organizational Structures and Work Routinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Parties and campaigns have answered the challenges of transformed communication environments by becoming information providers themselves. For this purpose, they use dedicated web presences, such as websites or social media profiles (Vaccari, 2013), as well as targeted approaches, such as email or online ads (Epstein & Broxmeyer, 2020;Fowler et al, 2020;Ridout et al, 2021aRidout et al, , 2021b. As a result, parties and campaigns may establish dedicated news desks that produce dedicated multi-media content optimized for distribution through varying digital media channels.…”

Section: Achieving Presence In the Information Space And Reachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital campaigning: How digital media change the work of parties and campaign organizations and impact elections

Jungherr¹

2022

Preprint

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Digital media have become important elements of political parties and campaign organizations all over the world. Examples from U.S. presidential campaigns dominate the public imagination of digital campaigning. At the same time, it is important to recognize that the uses of digital media in politics vary considerably depending on campaign contexts and resources. This makes necessary the analysis of the use of digital media by parties and campaign organizations in varying temporal and international contexts instead of expecting the examples from the U.S. to apply globally. The chapter will proceed by a discussion of some of the dominant theoretical and empirical approaches to the study of digital campaigning. Following this, the chapter will use a framework focused on campaign functions for the discussion of digital campaigning: The impact of digital media on organizational structures and work routines, resource collection and allocation, achieving presence in communication spaces and reach to audiences of interest, and the use of digital media as a symbol for professionalism and innovation of parties and their candidates.

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“…The Trump campaign, however, used email as yet another channel to engage with and solicit feedback from the public. Ben Epstein and Jeff Broxmeyer (2017) detail how, in a study of the massive amount of emails the Trump and Clinton campaigns sent their supporters, the Trump campaign was the only one to include short surveys, or “quizzes.” In those, the campaign asked its supporters how they felt on particular issues, or, in some particularly publicized cases, controversies that were currently in the press, or how Trump’s campaign was doing. These requests for feedback ranged from straightforward public policy polling questions that could help the campaign know what issues its biggest supporters were interested in, to biased, push-poll type questions such as this one after being in office for a year: “How would you rate the job the President is doing?” with answers limited to “Great” “Good” “Okay” and “Other,” without an option to explain the final option (Watson, 2017).…”

Section: Technological Performance Of Populismmentioning

confidence: 99%

The technological performance of populism

Baldwin-Philippi

2018

New Media & Society

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This article investigates the Trump campaign’s strategic use of digital platforms and their affordances and norms that contribute to a technological performance of populism. To do so, I build on theories of populism as a performance, rather than a set of identifiable qualities, and make a theoretical intervention calling for the need to add a material and technological focus to how scholars approach the concept in our contemporary media environment. This article presents a model for understanding populist affordances as those that center “the people” to various degrees, and applies that model in a case study of how campaigns in the 2016 US presidential race engaged in a technological performance of populism across a variety of platforms, including email, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and campaign-created mobile apps. Central to this analysis are campaign strategies of controlled interactivity, amateurism, participatory/user-generated content, and data-driven campaigning.

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The (surprisingly interesting) story of e-mail in the 2016 presidential election

Cited by 9 publications

References 26 publications

Digital campaigning: how digital media change the work of parties and campaign organizations and impact elections

Digital campaigning: how digital media change the work of parties and campaign organizations and impact elections

Digital campaigning: How digital media change the work of parties and campaign organizations and impact elections

The technological performance of populism

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