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Digital Campaigning in a Comparative Perspective: Online Strategies in the 2012 Elections in France and Québec Thierry Giasson, Université Laval Fabienne Greffet, Université de Lorraine Geneviève Chacon, Université Laval enpolitique.com Paper presented at the Biennial Congress of the International Political Science Association Montreal, 19-‐24 July, 2014 Please do not cite without authors’ permission.
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Over the last ten years, research on web politics has mostly focused on the transformations online technologies have imposed on political actors (parties, lobbies, activists, governments, candidates) in the way they engage and communicate with their stakeholders. Research has only more recently started to investigate how social media platforms specifically impact electoral strategy and organization (Karlsen 2009; Vaccari 2010; Kreiss 2012; Bor 2013; Chadwick 2013), and very little of it has engaged in comparative studies. This paper looks at the extent to which campaign organizations have integrated online platforms, including social media, in their strategy, organization and communication to achieve their electoral goals during the French presidential and Quebec general elections of 2012. Built on preliminary analysis of 37 experts interviews, this exploratory research represents the enpolitique.com1 project’s initial phase in revealing first what strategic objectives grounded these organizations’ online campaign efforts and, second, if these discourses on strategic goals differ according to variables of electability or partisan ideology. Investigating the intersection of online platforms and elections The 2008 American presidential campaign has often been presented in the literature as a turning point in how online platforms became a fundamental tool to post-‐modern campaigning. More specifically, lots has been written about the transformative aspect of mybarackobama.com, a website built on the format of a social networking site and created in 2008 to help the Obama camp harness the efforts of internet users interested in taking part in the candidate’s campaign. This volunteer mobilization platform, more commonly referred to as MyBO, has been described by some scholars as a transformational approach to online campaign as it was designed and used to mobilize online users so they could carry offline activities such as canvassing, neighbourhood rallies and get-‐out-‐the-‐vote (GOTV) initiatives in their electoral districts (Kreiss 2012; Nielsen, 2012: 56-‐57; Chadwick 2013: 136). It also allowed the Obama campaign to collect an impressive database of sociodemographic and political information of those millions of individuals who registered on the site or were contacted offline. Some have claimed that MyBO was instrumental in the candidate’s victory (Vaccari 2010: 319; Kreiss 2012: 18-‐21) and a model to be followed for other campaign organizations wishing to harness the power on online volunteers to contribute efficiently to offline electoral success.
1 Data presented in this paper are part of a larger research project funded in France by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (Programme de collaboration France-‐Québec en SHS) and in Québec by the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (Programme de collaborations Inter-‐Agences). This project called “webinpolitics.com: Strategies, Contents, and Perceptions of Online Electoral Campaigns. Comparing the 2012 French Presidential and Québec legislative Elections” is directed in France by Fabienne Greffet (Université de Lorraine) and in Québec by Thierry Giasson (Université Laval). The authors wish to acknowledge Gildas Le Bars and Mélanie Rembert at Université Laval for their important contribution in research assistance to this project.
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However, that’s is just one side of the story. Other researchers rather indicate that the much-‐hyped MyBO may be more of an outlier in post-‐modern electioneering (Vaccari, 2013: ix, 50; Enli and Moe, 2013). Online communication innovations developed for the American presidential system, with its dual contest of candidates fighting for independent voters in a relatively limited regulatory framework over expenses and communication, are seen as not generalizable to many other electoral contexts. These academics are calling for investigations to be carried on “less obvious” cases of multiparty systems and legislative elections where partisan identification and electoral regulations remain strong in order to better understand the similarities and differences institutional, social and cultural factors may play in why and how political parties adopt or resist to technological innovations (Enli and Moe, 2013, Gibson, 2013). Indeed, no two campaigns are similar. Volunteer mobilizing platforms similar to MyBO have been developed by parties in other systems, including the UK and Canada, with varying levels of longevity and effectiveness and organizations around the world are now using social media to communicate with voters. Institutional factors such as the difference in electoral systems, in party organizations (member or elite-‐based) or on spending regulations during elections have also been presented as potential explanations for these differences in online practices (Anstead and Chadwick 2010; Gibson 2013: 9; Vaccari 2013). Albeit for a few rare exceptions (see for instance Jackson and Lilleker, 2009; Karlsen 2009; Lilleker and Jackson, 2013) investigations looking at the association of 2.0 campaigning and election strategy have been concentrating predominantly on the American context in general and the 2008 Obama campaign in particular (Vaccari 2010; Kreiss 2012; Chadwick 2013; Blor 2013). Rune Karlsen (2009) examination of the 2005 Norwegian parliamentary election probably represents the only non-‐American case study investigating these questions directly through expert interviews. Therefore, little remains known about how social media are beeing integrated in the strategic organization of campaigns, implemented to mobilize volunteers and collect voter information for political marketing purpose in other national contexts as well as about the elite discourses that sustain the uses of social media in web campaigning. Hybrid campaigns Whether research consider the MyBO experience of 2008 as the trailblazer or the exception, the fact remains that digital technologies have imposed changes, in varying degrees, to the way parties organize for elections and campaign during them. Recent contributions seem to indicate novel practices of web 2.0 platforms which are modifying the way campaign preparation and electioneering is conducted in the US and elsewhere (Karlsen, 2009; Jackson and Lilleker 2009; Vaccari, 2010; Kreiss 2012; Chadwick 2013, Gibson 2013). These practices impact the campaigns in two ways: first they provide strategists and campaign managers with tools to gather resources, better understand and segment the electorate and target communication audiences
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(Lilleker and Jackson, 2013; Kreiss 2012; Nielsen 2012), and second they can help organize the ground campaign by mobilizing online users. In both instances, these changes have been depicted as a form of hybridization of campaigns (Chadwick 2007, 2013; Karlsen 2009; Vaccari 2010) where new tools and practices contribute to the modification of the way electoral strategy is conceived and implemented. These hybrid campaigns often give way to a significant input of online party activists and supporters. However, this online empowerment is managed or guided by electoral organizations who do not which to lose control of their campaigns and want to insure efficient coordination with offline activism (Kreiss 2012; Vaccari 2010). Karlsen, citing the works of Plasser (2002) and Schmitt-‐Beck (2007) on hybridity, reminds that the transformation of campaign practices and their adoption of new techniques “depend on a range of contextual factors” (2009: 185) and that there are never revolutionary modifications in approaches but rather an amalgamation of older and newer campaigning practices at play in hybrid organizations. Campaigning is coloured culturally, politically, socially and therefore, technologically, which in turn creates “distinct national patterns of campaigning”. This echoes Chadwick’s model of hydrid campaigns that depicts the intricate integration of online and offline communication channels as well as the more novel compromise of grassroots activism and elite control in the organization and implementation of electoral strategies (2013: 113). Looking at the Obama campaign of 2008, Chadwick highlighted how the candidate’s team accurately used social media and voter information databases to generate 500 millions dollars in contributions that were dedicated to purchasing television advertising time. Online media logic and traditional media logic were therefore cohabiting hand-‐in-‐hand, enhancing each other (idem: 116-‐122). Finally, the analyses of Vaccari (2010), Blor (2013) and Gibson (2013) reveal how parties present online, and especially on social media platforms, must now reach a compromise between the strategic importance of staying on message and the increase demands from internet users to take an active part in the campaign’s implementation both online and offline. As Blor indicates, “the ability of citizens to participate in politics using social networking sites has compromised the traditional top-‐down communication style” of political parties during elections (2013: 6). Having to deal with the coproduction and dialogic principles inherent to social media, parties have had to open-‐up to “citizen-‐initiated” campaigning (Gibson, 2013), where user generated electoral communications, comments, questions and reactions must found their way in a party’s official campaign. Organizations must now accept some loss of control over many elements of their communication strategies such as ads, posters or slogans which will be modified, commented, ridiculed and shared numerous times over the course of a campaign. However, as MyBO revealed, there is an electoral silver lining to this loss of control which comes in the form of volunteer mobilizing sites, used by parties to rally online party activists and
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supporters and provide them with tools and tactics to campaign online and offline for a party. Many parties around the world are now using these devices that contribute to message cohesiveness, resources collection and voter mobilization. Citing an Obama strategist from his 2008 campaign, Vaccari indicates that MyBO was designed to stimulate online users participation and maintained message cohesiveness. The platform, which gave the impression of a bottom-‐up, grassroots initiative, was in effect a centralized operation destined at providing internet supporters with scripts, tools and arguments to organize events and carry the Obama message online, but mostly offline. It was in effect “carefully controlled citizen participation” where the energy of individuals was channelled, guided. “When you are guiding something, you are not controlling it, you have people who are following you willingly to that message” (Vaccari 2010: 332). Consequently, organizations must trust internet users’ abilities to conform to the provided strategy when they campaign. A leap of faith that may actually not be too difficult to take since parties also closely monitor how voters carry their activities online and offline. Therefore, hybridity has been said to express itself in campaign design, in communicated contents and on how the strategy is implemented on the internet and on the ground. A comparative method As mentioned earlier, the bulk of the literature on web campaigning has been dedicated to the study of the American context. The numerous electoral contests where unlimited election spending, high levels of professionalization and of technological innovation are the norm explain why so much attention has been dedicated to US-‐based web campaigns. However, a more recent trend in the web campaigning community have brought together in special issues of journals (see for instance Vergeer 2012; Enli and Moe 2013; Gibson, Römmele and Williamson, 2014) contributions investigating among others the UK, France, Italy, Poland, Germany, Spain, Denmark or Norway. Some earlier edited volumes have also contributed to this trend (such as Ward et al. 2008 or Greffet 2011). Unfortunately, these collections are not comparative in approach with each of the assembled contributions built on distinct theoretical frameworks, research questions and methods. However, these juxtapositions of individual national case studies do reflect the internationalization of different web campaigning practices. Some studies have engaged in comparative research, looking at European nations (Lilleker et al. 2011), Commonwealth countries (Chen 2010) or at comparisons between the US and other nations (see Norris 2001; Anstead and Chadwick 2010; Vaccari 2013; Lilleker and Jackson 2013). However, very little work has been comparing online campaigns in French speaking nations (with the exception of Bastien and Greffet 2009) and none of it has focused on strategic objectives. The enpolitique.com project aims specifically at bridging this gap as it looks at how online campaigns were conceived, implemented and received by voters during the French presidential and Quebec legislative elections of 2012. The project investigates common research
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questions by using similar methodological tools allowing for a comprehensive and cohesive description and explanation of similarities and differences in online campaigning in the two contexts. Comparisons between these two nations are common in political science as they both share a common history, a common language as well as fair number of similar political institutions (multiparty system, left-‐right ideological cleavages, strong electoral regulations). In both contexts, voters cast their ballot for a single candidate affiliated to a party and the declared winner has gained a majority of votes. Being a province of a federal state, there are no presidential elections in Quebec. However legislative campaigns, as it is observed in many other parliamentary regimes, are strongly personalized affairs with party leaders’ tours being the central activity covered by the media during the election. Furthermore, not unlike the president of France, Quebec’s Premier heads the executive branch of provincial political system. Decision-‐making is highly centralized within the ministerial cabinet with the Premier controlling the priority of the government’s policy agenda. Case study, research questions and method design In order to better understand the strategic goals in online campaigning, this study compares the Quebec general and French presidential elections of 20122. The these two contexts, on their own and together, fit the profile of those “less obvious” cases to research that recent contributions have been calling for. These elections were effectively the first 2.0 campaigns in both France and Quebec. All contending organizations had official presences on most social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube or Tumblr, which had not been the case in the previous contests of 2007 in France or of 2007 and 2008 in Quebec. The two elections share similarities (francophone nations, multiparty systems, highly regulated electoral communication context, ideologically distinct formations, close pre-‐electoral standings according to polls) and also have their distinctive characteristics (different levels of electoral contest and of electoral systems). However, their shared commonalities in institutional and cultural factors do warrant in favour of a comparative investigation and, according to the literature (Gibson 2013; Enli and Moe 2013), could impact the extent to which online platforms and social media may become an integral part of electoral communication strategies in the two nations.
2 In Québec, our study focuses on the online campaigns of the governing Liberal Party of Quebec (PLQ, center-‐right and federalist), the Parti Québécois (PQ, social-‐democratic and pro-‐independence) which was the official opposition, Québec Solidaire (QS, anti-‐liberal left and pro-‐independence), as well of the two newly formed Option Nationale (ON, social-‐democratic and pro-‐independence) and Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ, conservative and federalist). In France, our sample includes the campaigns of outgoing President Nicolas Sarkozi, candidate for l’Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP, conservative), of the Socialist Party (PS) candidate François Hollande, of the Mouvement Démocrate (Modem, centre-‐right) candidate François Bayrou, of the candidate for Europe Écologie-‐Les Verts (EELV, green) Eva Joly, of the Front National (FN, right-‐wing nationalist) candidate Marine Le Pen, and of the Front de Gauche (FDG, anti-‐liberal left) candidate Jean-‐Luc Mélenchon.
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Two general questions are guiding this research. First, we are interested in uncovering the strategic objectives underlying the use of online platforms by political organizations in both elections. For what purposes were these organizations campaigning on the web, on social networking, microblogging and files sharing sites? Which kind of beliefs do web strategists share when talking about social networks and online communication? The literature indicates that parties usually focus on three broad categories of strategic goals in their social media presences: communication goals, political goals and marketing goals. These objectives are not mutually exclusive as parties often aim to achieve all three categories simultaneously in the course of an online campaign. Communication objectives refer to a party’s will to broadcast its electoral messages, to personalize its leader and team, to correct or “spin” coverage of its campaign and to attack its opponents’ campaigns (Karlsen 2009; Vaccari 2010; Bor 2013). Political goals are associated with winning the election, mobilizing supporters, getting out the vote, gaining visibility, generating resources (such as donations and volunteers) and promoting an ideology or political project (the core political values of the party, not its electoral platform) (Karlsen 2009; Vaccari 2010; Bor 2013). Finally, parties use social media for marketing purposes such as collecting voter information data, creating a relationship with voters by managing a community, micro-‐targeting voters and to adjust their strategy (Kreiss 2012; Nielsen 2012; Chadwick 2013). Second, we look at the potential impact of contextual and institutional factors on the way web strategists talk and think about online electioneering. The literature has shown early interest in investigating how institutional factors may affect parties’ and political organizations’ level of technological adaptation and innovation in online campaigning (Norris 2001; Anstead and Chadwick 2010). Past research have indicated that incumbency could affect the interactive dimension of online campaigning, with challenger/opposition parties engaging more actively in online campaigns. However, this hypothesis was not confirmed by Vaccari’s recent comparative work (2013: 119). Membership based parties as well as non-‐radical left-‐of-‐center organizations, especially socialist and green, have also been identified as more active online campaigners then liberal or conservative formations (Vaccari 2013: 104-‐109, 118). These questions have not been addressed so far in any comparative work dealing with both francophone nations and past research has also studied the impact of institutional factors on actual outputs of online campaigning, not on the strategic decision making process and the discourses of key actors involved. Therefore, we will look at how incumbency, ideological positioning and electability impact strategic decision making regarding online campaigning. Are challengers more active then incumbents in online electioneering? Are left-‐of-‐center formations more engaged then liberal and conservative parties? Does higher degree of electability increase cautiousness in online campaigning?
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These questions deal directly with the organizational aspects of campaign. In order to better answer them, we therefore conducted semi-‐structured expert interviews with 48 individuals who were directly involved in the design and implementation of the parties’ online campaigns. This qualitative interview method has rarely been done in past research on social media and politics, different forms of content analyses being the usual data collection process. We talked to campaign chairs, communication directors, social media advisers and online content and community managers from the five leading parties in the Quebec election and from the six main presidential candidates organizations in France. Our questionnaires contained 36 open-‐ended questions covering 7 topics dealing with aspects of the conception and implementation of online campaigns, including strategic goals, target audiences, e-‐political marketing practices, budgets, labour management, openness to internet users generated contents and organizational hierarchy. In France, 34 individuals were initially contacted and 29 participated in the study, for a response rate of 85%. In Québec, we invited 29 individuals and 19 completed the interviews, for a response rate of 65%. However, this paper uses a subsample of 37 interviews composed of the 19 Québec interviews and of 18 French interviews. It includes the narratives of 2 national campaign chairs, 6 national communication directors, 17 online/social media campaign directors/managers/developers as well as 12 content and community managers all closely involved in different phases of strategic development or tactical implementation of their organizations respective online campaigns. As Vaccari (2010: 323) acutely states in his account of the 2008 Obama campaign, including members from different levels of decision making and campaign management in our sample of respondents should allow us to “minimize the risk of overestimating the role of technology and neglecting other crucial organizational and political variables”. Interviews were conducted in person, by the lead investigators and research assistants, from October 18 2012 to February 27 2013 in France and from May 8 to June 4 2013 in Québec. They ran an average of 75 minutes. They were each transcribed in text format to facilitate content analysis. In order to identify the strategic objectives each campaign associated to its use of online platforms, we analyzed the transcripts of respondents’ answers following a deductive approach with the software QDA Miner. The process is simple. The analytical tool searches in the interviewees’ narratives for specific expressions and key words (or “codes” in QDA Miner lingo) listed in a predetermined dictionary that represent our analytical categories. Our dictionary was designed in order to measure the importance respondents gave to different aspects of the communication, political and marketing objectives1. The analysis was carried in three iterative
1 The detailed sixteen dictionaries can be provided on demand. However, we list here the categories associated with each of the three types of objectives: 1. Communication objectives: Broadcast a message, Events and leader tour, Control/Spin the message, Broadcast media content. 2. Political objectives: Generate resources, Promote an ideology, Getting known/increase notoriety, Get votes/GOTV, Online mobilization, Offline mobilization. 3. Marketing objectives: Collect voter data, Market intelligence, Targeting, Relationship/community building, Modify
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phases. We initially did a qualitative analysis of all 37 interviews to highlight recurrent terms and expressions used by respondents to depict their strategic objectives. This initial process allowed us to identify the numerous and distinctive ways political strategists in France and Québec refer to the same notions in each of their countries. We then created the dictionary of codes and ran four waves of tests (3 on the Quebec corpus and one on the French interviews) during which keywords in codes were added or modified to make our analytical categories more inclusive and accurate. Finally, each mention identified by the software was reviewed individually within its original context to insure it had been appropriately coded and that it represented adequately what the respondent meant to say. Additional adjustments will be made to our coding scheme, therefore the results presented in this paper must be considered as preliminary and exploratory. The final stage of the analysis will begin in the fall of 2014 and will cover the entire corpus of 48 expert interviews. Results Unsurprisingly, aggregate data indicate that in an electoral context, all political organizations state communication goals as a key strategic objective for using online platforms, especially as a way to broadcast messages to audiences : nearly half (48.7%) of the objectives mentioned by the interviewees were associated to communication activities. Political objectives came second and were mentioned quite frequently (34.7%), whereas marketing goals were more rarely expressed (16.8%). However, distinct patterns of campaign strategies can be observed between countries and between parties. Figure 1. Percentages of strategic objectives mentioned in expert narratives, France and Québec
the strategy. For each of these categories, a list of codes (keywords and expressions) has been produced. These lists of codes are the constituents of the dictionaries.
34,7
16,8 48,7
Poliqcal
Markeqng Communicaqon
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Communication Objectives Election campaigns are communication campaigns, whether the message is broadcasted online or offline. In that sense, online strategists are probably not that different from other, offline campaign, strategists. According to their narratives, online technologies appear to be particularly efficient on specific communication aspects, such as disseminating the messages, the most frequent of the communication objectives mentioned (26%, see annexes 1, 2 and 3 for the detailed distribution of the three categories of objectives for parties in each country). As an example, an interviewee from the Parti Québécois underlines the role of Facebook and Twitter in getting people informed about the party, compared with the limited impact of party websites previously:
"The website remains what we call the niche. It's our landing place. So within it, we put some content, it's a bit of a dumping site: pictures, information, news, releases, material to be shared, become a member of the party, make a donation. It's our house. Except that we don't expect people to type pq.org so we have many external tools, around it, surrounding our niche – Facebook, Twitter, "The Workshop3"– and all these tools that reach people more allow us to bring them to the information, to the pictures, the content, to the niche we want to share."
Similar points of view on the communication role of social networks associated with more traditional websites when broadcasting the electoral message is found in France. A French Green strategist from the EELV party describes how the message was adapted to Twitter so that it is easily sent and circulated:
"E.4 had conceived a tool where we tried to sum-‐up many arguments about various political issues. Each issue was summarized on a single page presenting our position and a link to different documents, with a lot of information, such as answers from online surveys we were doing. With also a "tweetable" version, with a link to the page."
Other important aspect of communication objectives with social networks is to control the message. Even though most strategists admitted this could become very difficult given the viral features of online communication, they still considered that it is possible. This shared position was expressed in 10% of all mentions to communication objectives. The Internet is actually a mix of online spaces where the level of control over the political message varies. For instance, a
3 The Workshop (or “L’Atelier” in French) was a online mobilizing platform dedicated at managing the PQ’s community of online supporters. The website was launched in early 2012 and it allowed supporters and activists to register online to exchange information and take part in partisan activities, both online and offline. 4 A colleague from the interviewee’s team of online strategists.
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Socialist strategist makes a difference between "institutional spaces", where the message is very controlled and official, an other "more free" spaces, like "TousHollande"5 on Twitter, where there more spontaneity and freedom was accepted.
"On official campaign accounts, for instance François Hollande on Twitter and Facebook, which were very institutional accounts, nothing frivolous was going on there, we were not taking any risk. Then we had accounts linked "TousHollande", especially the "TousHollande" Twitter account which was re-‐tweeting all the contents of the "TousHollande" website and there, because it wasn't François Hollande's personal account, we actually had a bit more freedom of speech."
This is quite similar to the situation analyzed by a Parti Québécois strategist who reveals the existence of non-‐official partisan spaces which facilitated the circulation of messages:
"Real Facts, I don't actually remember the exact name we gave it, but they were entities officially outside the party which were there to set the record straight. And we also had some internet websites which were already popular so that we could think outside the box. And disseminate the message everywhere."
Respondents also said their campaigns promoted reactive uses of social network. A strategist from the French Modem indicated that the web was used to correct what was said in traditional media: "Community Managers were replying during TV programmes. When we were attacked in a TV programme, they were replying to people, saying ‘no, no, this is not true, have a look at our manifesto’. When someone didn't understand something, we were sending a link to the election platform, or a link to a story on the website." Another strategist from the Liberal Party of Quebec indicated that social media were great tools to monitor the campaign and to carry attacks:
"Third, there were attacks. In the evening, we were looking at quotes from our political opponents, or from journalists attacking opponents, we were analyzing what they had said and then we used Twitter to reminded the media and our followers about opponents’ inconsistencies, factual errors, the figures…"
Social networks are therefore conceived as both complementary of and specific to other online and offline communication tools. They were used in combination with other traditional communication devices to broadcast and control the official message but also in an independent way to allow more direct and quicker contact, and potentially more freedom of expression and opportunities to attack counterparts. In that sense, they are part of a
5 "TousHollande" is an online tool created to engage people in François Hollande's campaign. It was mainly oriented towards online and offline activities, especially canvassing.
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hybridization process, where communication opportunities are both expanded and modified by technologies. Political and Marketing Objectives Political objectives come second in the discourses of the strategists, with 36% of the mentions. Contrarily to communication objectives which are quite diverse and shared between dissemination, control and attack, political objectives are clearly focused on activism and online mobilization (19% of the mentions, other types of political objectives are expressed on average in less then 6% of mentions from that category). As a strategist from Québec Solidaire pointed out:
"We did some drag-‐to-‐action. You will get people to your website through different ways, and you have to think of what you will do with these people. For instance you can… As for us, we had built an online platform where people could leave their availability in specific ridings. So you register your postal code, you say ‘I have two hours this week’, you fill in the form, and then someone from the national campaign dispatches people among local riding associations. It can be a way of reaching more activists".
Digital campaign tools are conceived as getting people active, "strategic action" being crucial, as pointed out by a UMP French strategist : "[t]he objective is, first, recruit a maximum of people. And second, once we have recruited people, make them move from non-‐strategic actions to strategic activist actions. A non-‐strategic action is an action that doesn't bring any new vote". Here, the MyBO model seems to operate: web communication and social networks are tools that allow citizens to engage and support their candidate; they are described by respondents as stimulating activism. Online mobilization comes first as an expected outcome, but offline mobilization is also the second most frequently mentioned political objective. Conversely, donations appear to be quite marginal, with 1.4% of the mentions. This makes a major difference with the US context where generating financial resources is a central objective to online and offline campaigns. Marketing objectives are also far less frequently mentioned than communication and political objectives: 18% of mentions are associated to them. They cover two main aspects: collecting data (4.8% of the mentions) and managing online communities (4.5%). Collecting data refers to building databases of e-‐mail addresses of supporters in order to circulate messages and promote activism. As a Coalition Avenir Québec respondents puts it:
"We were a bit inspired by the Obama campaign as well as by the Conservative campaign, they had impressive databases. Each person who was attending an event when we were still just a political committee and not yet an official party, we were asking
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them if they was interested in being contacted by the CAQ for further information. Most people filled the form, which allowed us to build a nice database."
The French Socialist party also collected email addresses during its primary campaign:
"Getting 600,000 people who are not party members, who would get some non-‐filtered campaign information from the party, this analytical item… if I add phone numbers and emails, we got the information of about 700,000 people during the primary campaign only".
Clearly, the aim is to open the boundaries of the parties and to expand the supporter networks through regular contact with people using online platforms and tools. Databases and community management are ways web campaign teams achieved this goal. Collection of data as well as online community management therefore becomes a central campaign task, like in the case of Option Nationale. One of their strategists revealed that : "web 2.0, clearly, is a question of communication and of mass-‐management with our community. It really is a relationship and a discussion we have with our community". However, contrary to what has been written about the American case, collecting data is often presented by respondents in France and Québec as a more difficult task to achieve, both because of lack of staff and legal restrictions. A Québec Solidaire respondent notices that:
"We can collect information, but the information collected through Facebook or Twitter isn't used for in-‐depth analysis, as far as I know. This is because it is a lot of work, of collection and analysis, I think we didn't have enough staff to do it. That said, it's true that thanks to data and canvassing, we could see we were reaching a certain population profile".
As well, a French strategist from the UMP indicated that: "the difference with the USA where everything is based on targeting and segmentation is that in France, commercial databases… cannot be bought and used by political parties." Such specific legislation forbidding data acquisition by political organizations does not exist in Canada. Furthermore, The Chief Electoral Officers of Canada and of Québec grant parties access to their respective voters registry prior to an election call to help them better communicate with voters during the campaign. Therefore, in addition to voter information they gather themselves through online and offline contacts, parties in Québec get direct access to personal electors’ data such as addresses or phone numbers. Following our first research question, we can conclude that the discourses of strategists focus mainly on communication objectives as well as political objectives. Marketing objectives are less
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frequently mentioned. Communication objectives are the most diverse, with uses of digital tools to disseminate and control the message toping the priority list for online campaigning. Political objectives mainly refer to online and, to a lesser extent, offline mobilization. Marketing objectives are not as developed in France and Québec compared to the US, even though community management and data collection exist to some extent. This shows that a more contextual approach is useful to take into account the features of each country and parties organizational structure. Contextualizing campaign objectives Moving to our second research question, we have examined to what extent contextual factors explain differences expressed in the objectives promoted by respondents in their discourses. Three types of contextual factors have been analysed: the country were the election was held, the ideological orientation of the organization and its positioning within the electoral competition (incumbent/challenger). Differences between countries Figure 2 presents the average scores for our three categories of objectives by country. The results show that the communication objectives dominate in Québec (61%) while they proportionally come second in France (38.4%). Conversely, political objectives come first in France (45.7%) while they are less frequent (21.4%) in Québec. Finally, the weight of marketing objectives is almost similar (16.2% in France, 17.6% in Québec). Figure 2: Average score per objectives, by country – France and Québec
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Quebec France
Communicaqon
Markeqng
Poliqcal
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This significant distinction between the proportion of mentions to communication objectives in Québec and France is constant on several sub-‐categories of goals we identified. For instance, 32% of communication mentions in Québec interviews expressed broadcasting the message as a goal when it was said in 20.2% of mentions in France. Fourteen per cent of mentions to communication goals in Quebec also highlighted the importance of message control, but this goal came up in only 5.9%% of mentions in France. Similarly, carrying attacks online was present in 6.3% of communication mentions in Québec, but only in 2.6% in France. Campaign events are more marginal and almost equally mentioned among objectives in both countries (5.5% in Québec, 6.9% in France). In Québec, web campaigning is used dominantly for broadcasting the party’s message, particularly through social networks. The 2012 elections had two new political formations (ON and the CAQ) running their first campaign and they used the web massively to gain visibility and to counteract their relative absence in traditional media coverage. In France, circulating the message and attacks are less frequent. This may result from a cultural explanation: in the French context, direct political attacks against other candidates are often considered too aggressive and are therefore not very popular in traditional electoral discourse. In addition, broadcasting a candidate’s official message online appears less important than mobilizing supporters and pushing them to do something for the candidate and/or the party. This could partly explain why political objectives dominate in the narratives of French strategist who talk frequently about online (20.7%) as well as offline mobilization (11.4%). Combining both dimensions is seen as one of the main objectives of web campaigns, as indicated by a Front de gauche respondents who declared: "you have to develop mobilization habits", that are linked both to permanent contact with supporters on social networks in order to keep them active both online and offline, as well as the organization of events such as candidate meetings. Ideological differences The second dimension we tested is ideological. As Figure 3 reveals, a clear trend in favour of political objectives was expressed from left-‐leaning organizations (38.7% as opposed to 29.8% for right-‐wing campaigns) whereas communication objectives were more frequently mentioned by respondents from the right (54.3% and 44% from left-‐wing respondents). This difference might be explained by the important role bases of party members have played traditionally in the decision-‐making processes of left-‐wing political formations, both in France and Québec. These parties have strong democratic inner structures that welcome member participation in administration, policy orientation, candidate selection, and electioneering. It’s therefore not surprising to hear strategists from these organizations mention more openly in their narratives the importance of online mobilizing tools and supporter networks, as well as to adhere to a more "citizen initiated" model of campaigning that provides space for party members and volunteers to self-‐organize and be active in the election campaign.
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Figure 3 : Average score per objectives, by ideological stand – France and Québec
In Québec, The Workshop created by the Parti Québécois was built on such a model. Put online several months prior to the election call, the platform helped the party constitute and manage its online community of supporters. The PQ’s online strategists then organized a selected few into a team of Internet activists, called “Supermilitants”, who were tasked daily at keeping the party’s message cohesiveness on all social media platforms. Similar initiatives were carried in the campaigns of Option Nationale and Québec Solidaire, the other two other left-‐wing member-‐based opposition party in Québec. In France, the French Socialist Party and the Radical-‐Left Front de gauche developed many initiatives to mobilize their communities both online and offline. The website "toushollande.fr" organized a canvassing operation that got massive traditional media coverage. The Front de gauche’s website "Placeaupleuple" also created numerous initiatives such as the opportunity for supporters to share photos of them online with the mention "I vote Mélenchon". This is hardly surprising for the French left since it has dominated the political cyber-‐space in France since 2007 (Greffet, 2011). Position in the electoral competition Finally, an organization’s position in the electoral competition could be another contextual factor that explains differences between campaigns in their online strategies. Figure 4 shows that, at the aggregate level, the governing organizations in our study (the PLQ in Québec and the Sarkosi-‐UMP candidacy in France) were expressing communication goals more often than their opponents. Respondents from these two organizations recognized that being an incumbent complicates online campaigning for two reasons. First, they were said to be constantly scrutinized by (new
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and old) media as well as opponents and every misstep came with negative consequences. Second, interviewees said they could not attack the same way as their opponents, since their institutional position as head of State or of government cast them automatically in a more deferential and respectful role, forcing them to remain “above the fray”. For instance, a PLQ respondent underlined that social networks could be a trap for governing politicians:
"We can see traditional media using social media. Yes, they use it to speed up the transmission of information, but at the same time, they use social networks to point out mistakes that can be made by authority figures in political parties. Like me for instance. They would have reported on any errors we could have made in using the medium. In that sense, we have to be much more careful before doing anything".
Figure 4: Average score per objectives, by position in the electoral competition – France and Québec
A point of view supported in France by this UMP strategist who noticed it was more difficult to lead the campaign online and get positive media coverage: "There were many things we didn’t do. Them [opponents], no, it's incredible, and no one said a thing. Us, when we were moving, we couldn't say the press was on our side, we couldn't say that. (…). It was difficult." Attacking also appeared to be delicate while in government. As another Sarkozi strategist revealed: "They (the Socialists) ran an anti-‐Sarkozy campaign, and they were open about it, but we were doing a pro-‐France campaign, France will do better etc." Using another strategy, the Liberal Party of Québec was attacking other competitors on its own website, while the leader's Facebook page was more neutral in tone:
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"We tried to stay above cheap attacks, however during an election campaign, it's always a struggle, obviously. We tried to make the content of the party’s Facebook page more adapted to the message we wanted to send every day. The website of the Liberal Party was a little more devoted to attacks, we were comparing, using data, statistics, corrections. The leader's Facebook site was focused on the message."
However, taken individually, data from each nation do tell another story, with the PLQ respondents predominantly expressing communication goals in their narratives (75.4% of all mentions) and our UMP interviewees rather predominantely leaning towards political objectives when speaking of their online campaigns (46.6% of all mentions, see annexes 4 and 5 for detailed distributions per objectives). Therefore, the PLQ and Sarkosi/UMP organizations followed distinct strategies when conceiving and implementing their web campaigns. This somewhat confirms Vaccari’s (2013) previous comparative work which found no clear support for the incumbency hypothesis in his analysis of 8 elections in six countries. Depending on the context of an election, from country to country, or even from one election to the next in the same country, governing parties do not necessarily engage in somewhat more cautious online campaigns focused on communicating and controlling their message than opposition formations, as this hypothesis claims. Even though respondents from both the PLQ and the UMP mentioned a strong preoccupation for communication goals in their narratives of their online campaigns, this was expressed in different proportions in each party. It is hardly surprising when studying an electoral context to see government strategists mention broadcasting and controlling their campaign’s message as a key feature of their campaign efforts. It is worth noting that these two incumbents were both quite unpopular and facing very strong oppositions when elections were called in France and Québec. Coherent and effective communication, staying “on message”, may have therefore become an important goal to achieve for these two campaigns. What is more surprising however is that French respondents from the Sarkozi/UMP camp mentioned that voter mobilization was more important to their online strategy, a goal that was virtually absent from the PLQ strategists’ narratives. Conclusions Our analysis of 37 expert interviews with campaign strategist from the leading political organizations in the 2012 Québec parliamentary and the French presidential elections reveals the dominant strategic objectives grounding their respective online electioneering. Respondents from all types of organizations in both nations indicated that campaigning now combines integrated old and new media approaches as well as increase levels of openness to user-‐generated content and activism. The two campaigns we compare were more hybrid and open than any previous one in each country. Whereas Jackson and Lilleker (2009) spoke of “web 1.5”
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campaigns in the past, the narratives from our respondents indicate that, in principle, all organizations were aiming higher this time around. Some, mostly in Québec, also expressed their growing interest in the political marketing potential associated to social media campaigning, especially in regard to voter data collection and community management. In this respect, 2012 may have been a transformational election that modified how campaign were (and will be) organized and implemented in both countries. However, hybridity took different forms and reached varied levels depending on various contextual factors. These factors include the organization’s ideological leaning as well as its position in the electoral competition. Incumbents and opposition contenders do not campaign online exactly the same way. Strategists from incumbent camps in both France and Québec frequently mentioned the public scrutiny their online campaigns were under and the potential risks associated with errors they would make. Incumbents have been presented in the literature as usually more risk-‐averse and more prone to running cautious, controlled and cohesive online communication strategies (Strömer-‐Galley, 2000; see also Vaccari 2013 for a more nuanced take on this argument). It seems to have been the case in the Quebec election studied here, but not the approach of the outgoing Sarkozi camp in France. Although, strategists from both incumbent organizations insisted on the importance of communication objectives, especially of broadcasting and controlling their message, respondents from the French incumbent team of Nicolas Sarkozi predominantly expressed political goals, such as voter mobilisation, as the driving principles of their online presences. This strategic consideration was echoed by many the strategists from opposition parties who also expressed political objectives more frequently in their narratives. Our interviews also revealed that respondents from left-‐wing organizations, in both countries, were also more likely to mention the importance of supporter mobilization in their online campaigns. The logic being to first attract ‘manpower’ online to then shepherd it offline to carry partisan activities such as canvassing, resource collection or information distribution. Our preliminary data show that contextualization of discourses and online campaigning objectives is essential to their understanding. Our study seem to indicate that according to national cultural traditions as well as institutional factors such as an organization’s ideological position, strategic goals for online campaigning may vary from one country to another. Something a comparative method, such as the one used for this research, helps bring to light. However, the results presented here are preliminary. They were generated during the final pre-‐test phase of our automated dictionaries and are based on a subsample of 18 of our 29 French interviews. The next phase of the research will be dedicated at running our comprehensive dictionaries on the entire sample of 48 transcripts in order to see if the trends highlighted in this
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paper are confirmed. The final part of the research will then compare these strategic goals with results from the content analysis of the political organizations online campaign components such as their official websites, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds in order to investigate how online electoral strategy transferred into actual tactical implementation. References Anstead, Nick and Andrew Chadwick (2010). “Parties, election campaigning, and the internet: toward a comparative institutional approach”, in Andrew Chadwick and Philip N. Howard (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics, New York, Routledge, 56-‐71.
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Annex 1. Percentage of Mentions per objectives, by parties (France-‐Québec) Objectives CAQ ON PLQ PQ QS FDG FN MODEM PS UMP EELV Mean
Political 17,4 42,6 7,0 23,5 16,7 61,6 31,3 46,9 51,0 46,6 36,6 34,7 Marketing 21,7 5,6 17,5 18,1 25,0 25,0 10,9 9,6 25,0 19,4 7,0 16,8
Communication 60,9 51,9 75,4 58,4 58,3 13,5 57,8 43,7 25,0 33,8 56,8 48,7
Annex 2. Percentage of Mentions per Types of Objectives, by parties (Québec) Objectives Codes CAQ ON PLQ PQ QS Mean Political Generate resources 1,4 0,0 0,0 0,7 0,0 0,4 Political Promote ideology/values 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 Political Getting known 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 1,0 0,2 Political Get votes 1,4 5,6 0,0 2,0 3,1 2,4 Political Mobilize online
involvement 14,5 37,0 7,0 20,8 12,5 18,4 Political Mobilize offline
involvement 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 Marketing Collect voter data 10,1 0,0 5,3 4,0 9,4 5,8 Marketing Market research 4,3 0,0 7,0 2,0 5,2 3,7 Marketing Targeting 0,0 1,9 3,5 1,3 0,0 1,3 Marketing Relationship/community
building 7,2 3,7 1,8 10,7 10,4 6,8 Marketing Strategy adjustment 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 0,0 Communication Broadcast messages 30,4 27,8 29,8 35,6 37,5 32,2 Communication Events and tour 5,8 11,1 1,8 2,7 6,3 5,5 Communication Attack opponents 7,2 1,9 12,3 6,0 4,2 6,3 Communication Control/Spin messages 15,9 5,6 29,8 13,4 5,2 14,0 Communication Share media content 1,4 5,6 1,8 0,7 5,2 2,9 TOTAL 100 100 100 100 100
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Annex 3. Percentage of mentions per Types of objectives, by parties (France) Objectives Codes FDG FN MODEM PS UMP EELV Mean Political Generate resources 0,0 0,0 3,2 5,2 1,1 5,4 2,5 Political Promote ideology/values 9,6 10,9 1,0 0,6 4,0 2,7 4,8 Political Getting known 0,0 3,1 0,0 1,9 1,7 1,4 1,4 Political Get votes 17,4 0,0 5,4 2,7 2,9 1,4 5 Political Mobilize online involvement 23,0 12,5 24,5 23,1 23,6 17,6 20,7 Political Mobilize offline involvement 11,6 4,7 12,8 17,8 13,3 8,1 11,4 Marketing Collect voter data 0,0 0,0 2,2 11,8 8,0 1,4 3,9 Marketing Market research 1,9 0,0 1,0 0,0 0,0 1,4 0,7 Marketing Targeting 13,5 1,6 3,2 6,6 5,1 1,4 5,2 Marketing Relationship/community
building 0,0 3,1 3,2 3,3 2,9 1,4
2,3 Marketing Strategy adjustment 9,6 6,3 0,0 3,3 3,4 1,4 4 Communication Broadcast messages 7,7 39,1 24,5 13,8 18,4 17,6 20,2 Communication Events and tour 1,9 4,7 6,4 2,7 5,1 20,3 6,9 Communication Attack opponents 0,0 0,0 1,0 2,7 6,3 5,4 2,6 Communication Control/Spin messages 0,0 9,4 6,4 5,2 3,4 10,8 5,9 Communication Share media content 3,9 4,7 5,4 0,6 0,6 2,7 3 TOTAL 100 100 100 100 100 100
Annex 4. Percentage of mentions per objectives, governing parties Governing Parties Political Marketing Communication Total PLQ 7 17,5 75,4 100 UMP 46,6 19,4 33,8 100 Mean 26,8 18,5 54,6 100 Annex 5. Percentage of mentions per objectives, opposition parties Opposition Parties Political Marketing Communication Total EELV 36,6 7 56,8 100 FDG 61,6 25 13,5 100 FN 31,3 10,9 57,8 100 MODEM 46,9 9,6 43,7 100 PS 51 25 25 100 CAQ 17,4 21,7 60,9 100 ON 42,6 5,6 51,9 100 PQ 23,5 18,1 58,4 100 QS 16,7 25 58,3 100 Mean 36,4 16,4 47,4 100
