Political Communication Trends

What can we learn from Greece and elsewhere

Meeting with representatives of PUK at PASOK headquartersDecember 2011

Alexandros Melidis

political communication systems in flux

 media/journalists Political institutions/ advocates

Citizens/voters/audiences

Mediatization

Decentralization

mediatization and its implications• Negotiations among politicians and the media. Mutual

dependency (sources in exchange of publicity). Ballanced power relationship?

•  Central Control. media values shape agendas and coverage. News management & political marketing to regain loses in influence. The rise of spin doctors and the relative marginalization of activism and bottom up politics.

• Opinionated journalism as a result to the influence of media experts and political consultants. 

• Civic disillusion as the public becomes well aware of the tactics being used

• Strategic communication trade - offs.  Politicians gradually become aware of the limitations of spin

decentralization trends

• declined participation

• loose political allegiances

• Delegitimisation of institutional politics

• political consumerism

• the rise of the politics of protest

• proliferation of web 2.0 communities

european MP trends

• early adopters, young EMPs using social networking (facebook & twitter)

• higher propensity to community building

• MPs tend to focus on one platform. Twitter for community building. Facebook for frequent updates. However, individual patterns vary.

• the more frequently they create content that makes their sites and profiles sticky, the more fans and followers they get and thus establish themselves as community leaders

web 2.0 in the local Italian elections

• the positive effects of web 2.0 rest upon the wider social and political environment

• offline inequalities (access, knowledge) affect online participation and engagement

• In the 2010 regional elections web 2.0 campaigning was NOT integrated to the "traditional" campaign

• A tendency to simply support the campaign without encouraging deliberative processes

• Largely experimental character of the web 2.0 campaign. Various strategies tested. No solid know how.

The case of the Swedish Pirate Party

• a single issue party with a concrete agenda: to reform copyright and patent law, end excessive surveillance, ensure freedom of speech

• A strategy to capture media attention beyond the file-sharing community. Youth section (young pirates). 

• The Pirate Party got elected in the EU elections but failed to enter the Swedish Parliament

• Will politics as usual alter Pirate Parties or will Pirate Parties manage to change politics?

Disintermediation or Re-Mediation: The case of Nichi Vendola

• Vendola, one of the most popular Italian politicians, employed a sophisticated fb strategy. He posted frequent updates from various sources of his activity that were especially crafted for fb. 

• The results were high average # of likes, comments and engagement despite the fact that he was not involved in two way dialogue

• Moreover, a nation wide network of pro Vendola intermediaries emerged as a result of his fb activity

• A digital repertoir of collective actions of talking & sharing is putting into practice

• Organisational hybridity. Blluring the lines between formal and informal structures

Obama 2008 by the numbers

source: Edelman

E-mail is still king…

“We believed in human being to human being communication.”

– David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager

MarketingProfs Digital Marketing World Spring 2009Art of the Possible: Online Branding Strategies and Tactics

David Plouffe, Barack Obama's 2008 Presidential Campaign Manager

Exemplar use of video

Greek parties on Facebook

• early analysis (2009) revealed that the PASOK facebook campaign was more effective than ND as it was more multidimensional and pluralistic

• however, both parties fb pages were leader centered• Facebook is still largely seen as another top down medium

mainly displaying 'official' content with some glimpses of friends comments

•  Greek parties social networking strategy resembles an inter medium web 1.5 model that is in between web 2.0 and web 1.0. Parties are trying to reserve central control and combine it with some sporadic social networking strategies

email marketing tools & general guidelines

Weekly newsletter with news in and around the party

Basic commentary. It provides officials and members with unified PASOK arguments and messages about the issues of the daily public agenda. See here: http://us1.campaign-archive.com/?u=d6a28a8ab45de3ba4f642baf6&id=1b57889000

An insightful email marketing platform, http://mailchimp.com

Communication guide for candidates: http://bit.ly/sLhBDW

No recipe for success.

Know your goals and resources Experiment! Try new strategies all the time Define what success means in an as

measurable way as possible Measure and keep track of your results Consider what to change. Optimize all the

time!

Sources Emiliana De Blasio, Matthew Hibberd, Michele

Sorice (Eds) (2011). Leadership and New Trends in Political communication. Selected Papers. CMCS. Rome. Available here: http://mediaresearch.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/cmcswp_0311p3.pdf

Edelman Georgios Lappas, Alexandros Kleftodimos,

Prodromos Yannas. (2010). Greek Parties and the web 2.0. Available here: http://bit.ly/t7BmWp

Thank you!

Alexandros Melidis almel01 AT gmail.com

http://almelidis.wordpress.com