Political Behaviour/Sociology

F18 - Digital Democracy and the Politics of Technology

Date: Jun 14 | Time: 12:00pm to 01:30pm | Location: 680 Sherbrooke St. West 361

Chair/Président/Présidente : Eric Desrochers (Université d'Ottawa)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Mathieu Turgeon (Western University)

Concern, indifference or something else? Analysing attitudes of party staff towards digital campaign tools in Belgium: Lucas Kins (Université libre de Bruxelles)
Abstract: Literature on the process of incorporation of new digital tools and practices within party organisations is scarce, mainly because of the difficulty to access data from political parties. Existing research has mainly focused on the overall professionalisation of digital campaigns (Mykkänen, et al., 2022), or on the end product (i.e. digitalized campaigns), but much less is known about how the two interact (Neihouser 2020; Ostrá 2021). We wish to address this gap in our research by investigating the attitudes of staff within political parties towards digital campaign tools. To do so, we draw from the literature on political parties, as well as sociology of organisations and political communication literatures. We opt for a qualitative and inductive approach, with interviews with various staff that are in charge of managing and running the digital campaigns of Belgian political actors at both regional and national levels. We analyse attitudes and opinions of interviewees towards the strategy of their party online, their reported interactions with party hierarchy and other party branches and most importantly their personal take on the use of digital tools for campaign purposes. The aim of this research is hence to provide a deeper understanding of the interaction between the individual and organisational levels (micro, meso), which is especially relevant considering the importance of individual attitudes (and capabilities), the communication, the structure as well as the frequency of self-reflectivity of the party in the current context of permanent campaign and ever-changing media environment (Ostrá 2021).

Translation or Strategic Adaptation? Culture, Language, and Digital Constituent Communication in Canada: Vincent Raynauld (Emerson College), Emmanuelle Richez (University of Windsor)
Abstract: While much scholarly work has been conducted on strategic uses of language for political outreach and mobilization internationally, much less attention has been given on its impact on the tone, structure, and focus of political messaging. Critically, due to a wide range of socio-cultural factors, members of different linguistic communities within a country can have different political and policy priorities and goals, which can in turn impact broader dynamics of constituent communication. This exploratory paper unpacks how elected officials communicating with their constituents adjust the tone, structure, and focus of their outreach and engagement depending on the language they use to appeal to the preferences and objectives of their audience. It is hypothesized that a divide exists between the messages shared with different socio-linguistic groups of a population within a national context. In order to examine this phenomenon, this paper takes interest in the bilingual (French and English) constituent communication activities of Canadian elected officials representing ridings with a strong official language minority (more than 25% of the population). It will examine specific elements of political messaging and compare the English and French versions of the messages. Among them include the political and policy matters discussed, the words and expressions used by the elected officials, the tone of the message, and the communication channels utilized to circulate the political messages. This paper provides insights into how language is becoming an additional tool for audience targeting and may be contributing to the identity-based and political polarization in Canada.

Diffuse platforms, common actors: A multi-platform method of mapping the (Canadian) information ecosystem: Aengus Bridgman (McGill University)
Abstract: Mapping the digital information environment of any given polity has overwhelmingly focused on single-platform approaches. However, audiences and information consumption patterns are importantly diffused across platforms, which makes any single platform view provide a very narrow window into overall system-level communities and consumption patterns. This paper demonstrates the feasibility and desirability of developing a multi-platform network, or multigraph, map of a country’s media and political commentariat. In our approach, politicians, news organisations, journalists, influencers, and elements of civil society, together constitute the nodes of the multigraph, while engagement with their various social media personas across multiple platforms constitute the edges. Using the Canadian case, we illustrate a set of explicit and implicit edges available to researchers and demonstrate several use cases of the multigraph. Specifically, we highlight automatic community detection, topic centrality and polarisation, and emergence of new actors in the information ecosystem. Researchers have long called for multi-platform research but have generally been missing a key insight: that actors are active across platforms and, under the assumption of a similar persona across platforms, this multi-platform activity can be used to anchor the overall social media information environment.