Personalization in e-campaigning: A cross-national comparison of personalization strategies used on candidate websites of 17 countries in EP elections 2009

Abstract

Candidate websites provide politicians with opportunities to present themselves in an individual way. To a greater or lesser extent politicians share personal information in their biographies and provide options to connect with citizens by putting links on their websites to their social networking sites (SNS). In this paper, although acting on different levels, both strategies are indicated as forms of personalization strategies used by politicians in their online communication. This cross-national study explores the use of these strategies on candidate websites in 17 countries during the elections for the European Parliament (EP) in June 2009. This is a comparative study of the personalized and individualized campaigning styles used during elections. Findings show that three general dimensions of personalization can be distinguished; 'professional', 'home and family' and 'personal preferences'. While the first two dimensions show a higher level of use among candidates, the third dimension on private information is hardly used. Results show also that countries from Central Europe inform their citizens more about their professional and personal circumstances, and Mediterranean countries use personalization strategies the least. Furthermore, the overall findings show that SNS were not frequently used during the 2009 e-campaigning. West European countries use links to SNS more frequently than

Studying Organizations on Instagram

“…For many years now, there has been a trend towards personalization in mass media and politics [49], which is also visible online [50]. Research on political campaigning has shown that parties focus increasingly on the personality of top candidates as the "communication of messages requires a messenger" [51] (p. 25).…”

Party and Candidate Websites: A Comparative Explanatory Analysis

“…Moreover, the link between the growing use of candidate websites and the ongoing processes of personalization in politics, according to which political campaigns and news coverage focus increasingly on the individual (McAllister, 2007;Van Santen & Van Zoonen, 2010), has, surprisingly, hardly been made (with the exception of, Hermans & Vergeer, 2012). Also, it appears that parties do point attention to individual politicians' websites, and these are frequently interlinked through for example Facebook or Twitter accounts.…”

Las redes sociales en la comunicación política: ¿comunicación unidireccional o conversacional?

“…La indaga ción de la plataforma social Facebook resultaría más problemática, sobre to do si la investigación hace referencia a cuestiones políticas (Larsson, 2014). Los estudios sobre el uso de Facebook en comunicación política han sido abordados desde metodologías cuan titativas (Gibson, Lusoli y Ward, 2008;Gulati y Williams, 2013;Hermans y Vergeer, 2013), midiendo los flujos de las publicaciones al contabilizar las herramientas que permite esta plata forma para la interacción (los botones de 'compartir', 'me gusta' y 'comen tar'). A partir de estas mediciones se ha analizado la comunicación en las redes desde una perspectiva cuanti tativa, quedando pendiente indagar sobre cómo se comunica en estas plataformas sociales.…”