Data-driven Campaigns Research Articles

Editorial: Data-Driven Campaigning in a Comparative Context—Toward a 4th Era of Political Communication?

Contemporary political campaigning takes place both online and offline, and can be data-driven. In this piece, we review existing knowledge around data-driven campaigning (DDC) and introduce the new contributions made by the pieces within this thematic issue. We reveal how the studies included in this thematic issue of <em>Media and Communication </em>contribute to this existing knowledge by providing an up-to-date account of how DDC in general, and political microtargeting in specific, have been employed in election campaigns between 2021 and 2023, in a range of countries: France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the US. As a collection, these studies highlight the variance that exists in the degree to which DDC is practiced, the range of DDC tools used, and attitudes toward DDC. In recent election campaigns, DDC takes many forms, and disapproval of DDC varies depending on how it is implemented.

Quantifying Data-Driven Campaigning Across Sponsors and Platforms

Although modern data-driven campaigning (DDC) is not entirely new, scholars have typically relied on reports and interviews of practitioners to understand its use. However, the advent of public ad libraries from Meta and Google provides an opportunity to measure the scope and variation in DDC practice in advertising across different types of sponsors and within sponsors across platforms. Using textual and audiovisual processing, we create a database of ads from the 2022 US elections. These data allow us to create an index that quantifies the extent of DDC at the level of the sponsor and platform. This index takes into account both the number of unique creatives placed and the similarity across those creatives. In addition, we explore the impact of sponsor resources, the office being sought, and the competitiveness of the race on the measure of DDC sophistication. Ultimately, our research establishes a measurement strategy for DDC that can be applied across ad sponsors, campaigns, parties, and even countries. Understanding the extent of DDC is vital for policy discussions surrounding the regulation of microtargeting and data privacy.

Data-Campaigning on Facebook: Do Metrics of User Engagement Drive French Political Parties’ Publications?

Research on data-driven campaigning has mostly focused on the strategies of central campaign teams. However, there is a lack of evidence explaining how parties and supporters use data-driven campaigning techniques to organise their social media campaigning. Do user engagement metrics influence the choice of campaign themes by encouraging political parties to concentrate their communication on issues that are most liked, commented on, and shared? Our study focuses on the use of Facebook by French political parties and their supporters during the 2022 presidential election campaign. We conducted a supervised content analysis based on machine learning to examine their Facebook posts (<em>n</em> = 17,060). Our results show that the issues prioritized by parties on Facebook may be different from those that are most prominent in their broader communications. In most cases, however, these themes are not chosen based on user engagement, even for parties that claim to have developed their base through digital channels. Instead, the choice of themes seems influenced by more traditional campaign strategies, such as the desire to capture the electorate of their closest rival. In our conclusion, we discuss the implications of these findings for the adoption of data-driven campaigning in digital election communication across Europe.

Data-Driven Maintaining: The Role of the Party and Data Maintenance in the US Context

Political campaigning in the US is unique in the global context for its lack of attention to the role of the party, largely due to the centrality and power of campaigns. In the US context, successful data-driven campaigning (DDC) has often been covered by the press and analyzed by US scholars as an innovative campaign creating new tools and new tactics (and earning more media coverage for them). This research investigates the oft-ignored role of party organizations in DDC in the US, and in doing so, highlights the invisible work of data maintenance that is their purview. Methodologically, it brings together interviews with staffers from both party organizations and campaigns with thematic analysis of news coverage to answer questions about how the data-driven practices of parties versus campaigns differ, how parties’ data work is (and is not) covered, and what, in staffers’ views, contributes to such coverage. Ultimately, this research highlights how a lack of attention to party organizations’ work has gone hand in hand with a lack of attention to maintenance work in both academic and public discussions of DDC.

Accepting Exclusion: Examining the (Un)Intended Consequences of Data-Driven Campaigns

Using citizens’ data not only enables precise targeting of campaign messages online, but also the deliberate exclusion of certain groups of citizens. This study asks (a) to what extent have citizens been excluded from political (online) ads during the Dutch 2021 and 2023 election campaigns and (b) how acceptable citizens find the practice of exclusion. To answer these questions, we use data from the Meta Ad Targeting dataset to investigate any employed exclusion criteria by parties and rely on survey data collected during the 2023 Dutch general election to learn about citizens’ opinions. Our study reveals that political parties across the spectrum allocated less budget to targeting and excluding citizens in 2023 compared to 2021. Predominantly, exclusion is based on age, gender, and place of residence, with criteria such as political views, migration background, and religious beliefs being relatively uncommon. Despite citizens considering all forms of exclusion unacceptable, they view exclusion based on political views as the most tolerable. Moreover, individuals leaning towards the political right exhibit greater acceptance of exclusion, particularly based on migration background. In scrutinizing the extent of citizen exclusion from political campaign messaging and citizens’ perceptions, we contribute to the discourse on the unintended consequences of data-driven campaigning.

Dommett, Katharine, Glenn Kefford and Simon Kruschinski. 2024. Data-driven campaigning and political parties—Five advanced democracies compared

Dommett, Katharine, Glenn Kefford and Simon Kruschinski. 2024. Data-driven campaigning and political parties—Five advanced democracies compared

Political Advertising and Data-Driven Campaigning in Australia

There have been breathtaking accounts of the use of data in political campaigns for microtargeting and message testing, among other practices. Most of these examine presidential campaigns in the US. But evidence speaking to the use of data-driven campaigning (DDC) beyond the US is rather thin. Here I examine the use of DDC in Australia, focusing on political advertising specifically. I interview 15 campaign practitioners, asking about several indicators of DDC, including (a) the extent of ad targeting, (b) tailoring of ads to specific audiences, (c) the use of data analytics in ad targeting/tailoring, (d) efforts at online fundraising, and (e) ad testing. I find considerable variation in the use of DDC that stems from differences in resources, different campaign philosophies, and uncertainties about the data. I also find an important role for marketing agencies in supplementing DDC capabilities.

Impact of Social Media Platform on Audience Engagement

In today’s dynamic film industry, social media platforms have emerged as game changers for movie marketing and audience engagement techniques. This study digs into the tremendous impact of social media on audience involvement, analyzing both the challenges and triumphs of using these platforms for film promotion with the growth of platforms such as Instagram and YouTube, film studios now have unparalleled potential to engage consumers through captivating content, influencer collaborations, and data-driven campaigns. However, navigating the ever-changing Social media world presents substantial hurdles, such as algorithm updates, content saturation, and the need for ongoing innovation. This study investigates the distinct features and capabilities of various social media platforms, as well as their usefulness in increasing audience engagement for movie marketing. It looks at how user-generated material, interactive experiences, and community- building might help moviegoers develop long-term loyalty and advocacy. The report also digs into the challenges encountered by cinema marketers, such as maintaining a consistent brand presence across different platforms, adjusting to evolving trends and technology, and optimizing audience- centric strategies using social media analytics and data-driven insights. This study aims to uncover best practices and actionable insights for film studios looking to maximize audience engagement and propel their promotional efforts to new heights by examining case studies of successful movie marketing campaigns and analyzing the strategies used by industry leaders. Finally, this study adds to a better knowledge of the impact of social media platforms on audience engagement in the film business. paving the way for more effective and imaginative movie marketing techniques that appeal to digital consumers.

Data Driven-Campaign Infrastructures in Europe: Evidence from Austria and the UK

Data-driven campaigning is often depicted as the latest iteration of modern campaign practice. This term captures the idea that political parties now routinely gather data from online and offline sources to inform decision making in regard to a range of campaign actions. Within existing scholarship, however, comparative studies of campaign practice are lacking, meaning that we lack an understanding of how and why data-driven campaigns vary across different contexts. In this paper we offer an in-depth analysis of data-driven campaigning in two European countries; Austria and the UK. Using elite interviews with party officials and campaigners in nine parties, we conduct a qualitative thematic analysis to explore data-driven campaigning practices and perceptions. Through this research, we highlight hitherto unappreciated cross-national variations in data-driven campaigning and suggest that differences can be attributed to structural and agential factors.

Book review: Data-driven campaigning and political parties: Five advanced democracies compared

Book review: Data-driven campaigning and political parties: Five advanced democracies compared

Second thoughts on digital first: Exploring the development of election campaigning among Swedish political parties, 2010–2022

Abstract This article offers a longitudinal perspective on communications during election campaigns from a political-party perspective, where strategic considerations about digital media are compared across time. Our analysis is grounded on the concepts of hybridisation and data-driven campaigning, where digital technology tends to play a central role without replacing all traditional campaign features. Empirically, the study is based on a longitudinal analysis of four election campaigns in Sweden during 2010–2022. The analysis shows that Swedish political parties have gradually integrated digital campaign features in their structure and strategy. The process is not linear, but rather back and forth, as party perceptions of the importance of communication channels vary across time. The results imply a development where all parties, regardless of size and ideology, are increasingly making rational judgments of which combinations of old and new campaign methods and communication channels are most effective.

Democracy and digital disintegration: Platforms, actors, citizens

Abstract The digital transformations of contemporary media systems have had severe consequences for democracy and public debates. This introductory article addresses key challenges of what we refer to as varieties of “digital disintegration” within democratic societies. The eight contributions in the special issue are thematised in three parts. The first part explores disintegration within the context of political communication during elections, including data-driven campaigning, populism, and politicised forms of news production. The second part delves into the role of alternative news curators, audience polarisation, and issues of self-censorship in digital information environments. The third part centres on deliberative norms connected to content moderation of user comments within legacy media and the consequences digitalisation has had on journalistic sourcing practices and source diversity over time. The contributions offer valuable empirical insights, as well as new lines of thinking concerning democracy and digital and disintegrative transformations in the Nordic region and beyond.

Beyond the Ballot: A Comparative Analysis of Political Microtargeting Practices and Regulations in Kenya and Nigeria

Technological advancements have significantly impacted the political world. Unlike the traditional means of conducting campaigns, technology makes it possible to conduct data-driven campaigns on a larger scale and with high levels of specificity. For political parties, better clarity leads to hyper-individualized communication in a process known as microtargeting. Critics argue that political microtargeting can directly manipulate and suppress voters, exacerbate polarization, perpetuate misinformation, and indirectly lead to long-term effects by encouraging political parties to ignore individuals whom they deem unlikely to vote or those who are digitally excluded. This paper studies political microtargeting in Kenya and Nigeria because of data-driven campaigns that have been observed in these jurisdictions in the past and due to the increased reliance on social media platforms that political actors are utilizing to influence voters. It argues that political microtargeting is an issue of concern and therefore, using Kenya and Nigeria, it pushes the agenda that countries in the Global South should implement policies and regulations to curtail the negative impact of the practice. To examine the extent of political microtargeting in both Kenya and Nigeria, this paper employs a multi-phase approach that involves an analysis of paid Facebook advertisements in both countries during the past election periods.

Operationalizing data-driven campaigning: designing a new tool for mapping and guiding regulatory intervention

ABSTRACT Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, governments are increasingly concerned about the way in which citizens’ personal data are collected, processed and used during election campaigns To develop the appropriate tools for monitoring and controlling this new mode of “data-driven campaigning” (DDC) regulators require a clear understanding of the practices involved. This paper provides a first step toward that goal by proposing a new organizational and process-centred operational definition of DDC from which we derive a set of empirical indicators. The indicators are applied to the policy environment of a leading government in this domain – the European Union (EU) – to generate a descriptive “heat map” of current regulatory activity toward DDC. Based on the results of this exercise, we argue that regulation is likely to intensify on existing practices and extend to cover current “cold spots”. Drawing on models of internet governance, we argue that this expansion is likely to occur in one of two ways. A “kaleidoscopic” approach, in which current legislation extends to absorb DDC practices and a more “designed” approach that involves more active intervention by elites, and ultimately the generation of a new regulatory regime.

The regulatory ecosystem of data driven campaigning in the UK

Political campaigns are increasingly described as data-driven, as parties collect and analyse large quantities of voter data to target their campaign messages in ever more granular ways, particularly online. These practices have increasingly been facing calls for greater regulation due to the range of harms they are seen to pose for citizens and democracy more generally. Such harms include the intrusions on voter privacy, reduced transparency in how messages are constructed and targeted at voters and exposure to increasingly divisive and polarizing political content. Given that data-driven campaigning (DDC) encompasses a range of different practices that are likely to fall under the remit of multiple agencies, it is not evident how suitable current regulatory frameworks are for addressing the harms associated with the growth of DDC. This paper takes a first step toward addressing that question by mapping an emergent regulatory “ecosystem” for DDC in the particular case of the UK. Specifically, we collect and analyse interview data from a range of regulators working directly or indirectly in the election campaigns and communication arena. Our analysis shows that while privacy violations associated with DDC are seen by regulators to be largely well covered by current legislation, other potential harms are given lesser to no priority. These gaps appear to be due to regulators lacking either the powers or the incentives to intervene.

(Digital) Campaigning in Dissonant Public Spheres

ABSTRACTWith the advent of digital media and social media platforms, the speed of innovation and technology adoption in campaigns have increased tremendously. At the same time, the campaign environment and its rules are in constant flow, as platform logics, party operations, and voter alignments both reflect and create instability in many political systems. Additionally, disinformation, foreign interference in campaigns, hyper-partisan media ecologies, and hyperactive users have all created changes in opinion climates. In light of these developments, and building on the theoretical concept of increasingly disrupted and dissonant public spheres (developed by Barbara Pfetsch and Lance Bennett), this special issue seeks to expand research on campaigning beyond assumptions of well-functioning political systems, to better understand the erosion of institutional legitimacy and trust, and their effects on communication processes. The special issue is organized within two conceptual approaches. The first cluster of manuscripts observes how political candidates, organizations, and parties optimize their behaviour within the dissonant political environment. The second part examines responses, perceptions, and consequences of the disrupted environment on the public. Finally, four integrated forum essays look into how dissonant public spheres may disturb democratic processes, discuss the role of data-driven campaigning, and address how limited access to platform data affects our understanding of dissonant public spheres.

Just what is data-driven campaigning? A systematic review

ABSTRACT Discussions of data-driven campaigning have gained increased prominence in recent years. Often associated with the practices of Cambridge Analytica and linked to debates about the health of modern democracy, scholars have devoted considerable attention to the rise of data-driven politics. However, most studies to date have focused solely on practice in the US, and few scholars have made efforts to define the precise meaning of ‘data-driven campaigning’. With growing recognition that data-driven campaigning can take different forms dependent on context and available resource, new questions have emerged as to exactly what features are indicative of this phenomena. In this piece we systematically review existing discussions of data-driven campaigning to unpack the components of this idea. Identifying areas of convergence and divergence in existing discussions of ‘data’, ‘driven’, and ‘campaigning’, we classify existing debate to highlight integral features and variable practices. This article accordingly provides the first comprehensive definition of data-driven campaigning, and aims to facilitate international study of this activity.

Beyond Brexit? Public Participation in Decision-Making on Campaign Data During and After Referendum Campaigns

While the Brexit referendum campaign has been extensively researched, media, regulatory bodies, and academics have often talked at cross-purposes. A strong focus on Cambridge Analytica’s role in the 2016 referendum, despite official investigations concluding the company had only limited involvement in the campaign, has distracted attention from more mundane but highly controversial data practices, including selling voters’ data to third parties or re-using campaign data without consent from data subjects. This empirical case study of data-driven referendum campaigning around Brexit raises two broader theoretical questions: First, moving beyond the current focus on transparency and accountability, can public participation in the ownership and management of campaign data address some of the problematic data practices outlined? Second, most academic literature on data-driven campaigning, in general, and referendum campaigns, in particular, has often overlooked the key question of what happens with campaigning data once campaigns are over. What legal safeguards or mechanisms of accountability and participation are there to guarantee consent when it comes to further re-use of people’s data gathered during campaigns? Ultimately, the article raises the question of who should have a say in how “people’s data” is used in referendum campaigns and afterwards and makes a case for democratising such decisions.

Data-driven campaigning and democratic disruption: Evidence from six advanced democracies

Data-driven campaigning has become one of the key foci for academic and non-academic audiences interested in political communication. Widely seen to have transformed political practice, it is often argued that data-driven campaigning is a force of significant democratic disruption because it contributes to a fragmentation of political discourse, undermines prevailing systems of electoral accountability and subverts ‘free’ and ‘fair’ elections. In this article, we present one of the very first cross-national analyses of data-driven campaigning by political parties. Drawing on empirical research conducted by experts in six advanced democracies, we show that the data-driven campaign practices seen to threaten democracy are often not manifest in party campaigns. Instead, we see a set of practices that build on pre-existing techniques and which are far less sophisticated than is often assumed. Indeed, we present evidence that most political parties lack the capacity to execute the hyper-intensive practices often associated with data-driven campaigning. Hence, while there is reason to remain alert to the challenges data-driven campaigning produces for democratic norms, we argue that this practice is not inherently disruptive, but rather exemplifies the evolving nature of political campaigning in the 21st century.

Political Micro-Targeting in Kenya: An Analysis of the Legality of Data-Driven Campaign Strategies under the Data Protection Act

The 2013 general election marked the entry of data-driven campaigning into Kenyan politics as political parties begun collecting and storing voter data. More sophisticated techniques were deployed in 2017 as politicians retained the services of data analytics firms such as Cambridge Analytica, accused of digital colonialism and undermining democracies. It is alleged that political parties engaged in regular targeting and more intrusive micro-targeting, facilitated by the absence of a data protection legal framework.The promulgation of the Data Protection Act, 2019, ostensibly remedied this gap. This paper analyses whether, and to what extent, political parties can rely on the same–or similar– regular targeting and micro-targeting techniques in subsequent elections. While regular targeting differs from micro-targeting as the latter operates at a more granular level, both comprise of three steps- collecting a voter’s personal data, profiling them, and sending out targeted messages.
 This paper considers the legality of each of these steps in turn. It finds that going forward, such practices will likely require the consent of the data subject. However, the Act provides for several exceptions which political parties could abuse to circumvent this requirement. There are also considerable loopholes that allow open access to voter data in the electoral list as well as the personal data of the members of a rival political party. The efficacy of the Data Protection Act will largely rest on whether the Data Protection Commissioner will interpret it progressively and hold political parties to account.