Political communication trends: What can we learn from Greece and elsewhere
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Transcript of Political communication trends: What can we learn from Greece and elsewhere
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