Porting the political campaign: The NationBuilder platform and the global flows of political technology

Abstract

Political parties rely on digital technologies to manage volunteering, fundraising, fieldwork, and data collection. They also need tools to manage web, email, and social media outreach. Increasingly, new political engagement platforms integrate these tasks into one unified system. These platforms pose important questions about the flows of political practices from campaigns to platforms and vice versa as well as across campaigns globally. NationBuilder is a critical case in their study. It is a leading non-partisan platform used in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The case of NationBuilder in Canada analyzes how political engagement platforms coordinate the global flows of politics. Through interviews, we find reciprocal influence among developers, party activists, consultants, and the NationBuilder platform. We call this process porting. It results in NationBuilder becoming a more portable global platform in tandem with becoming an imported, hybridized part of a campaign’s digital infrastructure.

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