eCampaigning Forum

St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford March 21-22, 2012

Professor Rachel Gibson, Institute for Social Change, University of Manchester

http://www.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/socialchange/

Social Media and the Rise of ‘Citizen-Initiated’ Campaigning

Political Campaigns Pre-Web: Phase IEarly 20th century through to 2nd World War:

• Direct• Localised• Face-to-face/‘live’ quality

Rallies & Marches

Parties

Newsletters & Pamphlets

Phase 2: WW2 through to 1980s

Seeds of change:1930s FDR’s Fireside Chats Indirect / mediated National

Defining Moment JFK vs Nixon 1960 1st Televised Presidential Debate

Personality rather than party-based

Negative ‘Daisy Girl’ Ad LBJ

Parties lost their supremacy

Phase 3: 1980s - present

New Style of Campaigning Identified• ‘Americanised’ ‘Modernized’ ‘PostModern’ ‘Post-

fordist’ ‘Stage III’ ‘Professionalised’ ‘Political Marketing’ (Denver & Hands; Farrell & Webb; Norris; Plasse; Wring; Lees-Marshment)

Key Traits• New tools – computerized databases, direct mail, telemarketing,

focus groups, targeted polling and tv advertising, internet.

• Relationship to voters – consumers to be persuaded.

• Campaign style – personalized around leaders, permanent, individualized, marketed/targeted, professionalised and scientific.

• Organization – central HQ plus outside consultants. Little role for the grassroots

Where does the web fit in?

Hypothesis 1: Increases trends for micro-targeting, need for consultants & professionals, centralizes power within technocratic elite. Increases top-down approach with templates for local campaigns. Campaigns become more ‘virtual’ and synthetic.

Hypothesis 2: Increases opportunities for citizen involvement in campaigns, devolves power in parties and makes them more networked (like issue/protest organizations), increases contacting/mobilization of voters, reconnects parties with their local civic roots.

Initial efforts – somewhat disappointing!

Not just labour…

Over the border things proved a bit more exciting…

Then came Web 2.0 or ‘social media’...

2004 U.S. Presidential Race and rise (and fall) of Howard Dean

• Blog for America, Meetups, Baseball Bat fundraiser, DDF

2008 Victory of Barack Obama – his ‘MyBO’ site marked a key shift in established parties/campaigns use of digital technology● Gave rise to ‘citizen-initiated campaigning’ - where

ordinary citizens (not members/official staff) use digital tools to undertake key campaign tasks and so ‘co-produce or manage’ the election effort, at least at the local level.

● 15 m members by June 2008● Does allow for central coordination and monitoring but

extensive tactical autonomy for volunteers ● Testimonies of those involved indicate its ‘transformative’

potential. Creation of ‘social capital’ (Putnam, 2000)

‘Obama’s unprecedented online success guarantees that there’s not a single campaign in 2012, Democrat or Republican, that won’t place the Web at the core of its operation. The floodgates are open. This doesn’t mean just hiring Web developers, bloggers, videographers – the works. It also means using the Internet to invite people into the process, giving them something to work for, offering them a stake in victory or defeat. …this new dynamic will transform the way campaigns are run – and, beyond that, the way the winning candidate governs. Fundamentally, all of this is redefining our relationship with our politics.

‘Politics is No Longer Local. Its Viral’ Jose Antonio Vargas, The Washington Post December 28

2008: B01

Everyone who goes out canvassing comes back with at least one story of someone they impacted. The team leaders are trained to give people time to tell those stories, and so everyone gets a sense of progress and they learn from each other how to be more effective next time. That’s a totally different picture than what I saw in scores of Kerry offices in 2004: crowds of canvassers receiving minimal instruction before being sent to an unfamiliar neighborhood and rarely getting the chance to debrief with others….

At the end of my own neighborhood team meeting in Westport, Kansas City, my team leader Jennifer Robinson, totally unprompted, told me: “I’m a different person than I was six weeks ago… now I’m really asking how can I be most effective in my community? I’ve realized that these things I’ve been doing as a volunteer organizer – well I’m really good at them, I have a passion for this. I want to continue to find ways to actively make this place, my community, a better place. …I’m asking now: Can I look for permanent work as an organizer in service of my community? …before the campaign it never occurred to me that I could even ask that question….”

Zack Exley ‘The New Organizers’ The Huffington Post October 8th 2008

Evidence from Project CODE – Comparing Online Democracy and Elections

www.projectcode.net

(1) Development of the Citizen Initiated Campaign Index (CIC)Scale that measures extent of citizen involvement in 5 core tasks using

internet technology:1. Community building/Social networking2. Resource generation3. Get out the vote – voter mobilization 4. Message development5. Message dissemination

Cases for analysis: UK GE 2010 ; Australia 2010; US Pres 2012 France Pres 2012

Measuring 5 Functions of Web Action SitesCommunity Building

Setup profile PhotoBiographyWhy joinedSetup/join GroupsSetup BlogSetup WikiEmail/msg systemExternally promote profileSubtotal (additive 0-9)

Internal MobilizationPersonal fundraisingPromote membershipSign up as local organiserSign up as candidateOrganize / add eventVote leaders to attend eventsSubtotal (additive 0-6)

External MobilizationGOTV offline Access phonebank Sign up for f2f canvassing Sign up to discuss with f&f Leaflets download Externally promote eventGOTV online Send email Post to FaceBook Post to Twitter GOTV i-phone app Elite Mobilization Email forward to MP/newspp Start e-petitionSubtotal (additive

0-11)

Message create Policy email fwd/customize Poster/leaflet reate/customize Manifesto input/feedback Message distribute Web banners/ads d-load Posters/leaflets d-load Email/share policy docs RSS feed to website Share blog posts ext. Link to SNS profile Link to Twitter account Import email contactsSubtotal (additive 0-11)

Figure 1: Citizen -initiated Campaigning Emphasis by Party

0 5 10 15 20 25 30

LDA

My Cons

Membnet

SNP

BNP

Community

Intra-mob

GOTV

Msg production

Conclusions so far...

• Political institutions matter:CIC performance – US (Hi) UK (Med) AUS (Low)

• Party outloook size and resources matter – major parties, mainstream left and resource ‘poor’

• No evidence so far that increases overall amount of voter contact. ● BES statistics show stable level of contact 2005 to 2010 ● Across parties 2010 rates of online contact low but

Conservatives highest (2.1%) followed by Labour and LibDems

Expectations were high:

Howard Rheingold (1993) ‘The Virtual Community’…the future of the Net is connected to the future of community, democracy,

education, science and intellectual life… The political significance of CMC lies in its capacity to challenge the existing political hieararchy’s monopoly on powerful commercial media, and perhaps thus revitalise citizen-based democracy.

Nicholas Negroponte (1995) ‘Being Digital’…As we interconnect ourselves, many of the values of a nation state will give

way to those of both larger and smaller electronic communities. [there is] …A decentralized mindset growing in our society, driven by young citizenry in the digital world. The traditional centralist view of life will become a thing of the past.

Esther Dyson (1998) ‘Release 2.1: a design for living in the digital age’

…For me the great hope of the Net is that more and more people will be led to get involved with it, and that using it will change their overall experience of life. …The Internet is a powerful lever for people to use to accomplish their own goals in collaboration with other people. Its more than a source of information, it’s a way for people to organise themselves. It gives them power for themselves. Rather than over others.