Presidential campaigning in the Internet age

Abstract

Presidential candidates and their campaigns in the United States are fully invested in the use of social media. Yet, since 1996 presidential campaigns have been experimenting with ways to use digital communication technologies on the Internet to their advantage. This book tells the stories of the practices of campaigning online between 1996 and 2016, looking at winners and also-rans. The stories provide rich details of the factors that contribute to the success or failure of candidates, including the influence of digital media. The stories also show how political campaigns over six election cycles transitioned from the paradigm of mass media campaigning, to networked campaigning, and finally to mass-targeted campaigning. Campaigns shifted from efforts at mass persuasion to networked persuasion by identifying and communicating with super-supporters to give them the right digital tools and messages to take to their social network. Campaigns learned over time how to use the Internet’s interactive affordances to communicate with the public in ways that structures what supporters do for the campaign that maximizes strategic benefit—what I call “controlled interactivity.” By the 2016 campaign, technology companies made it easier and more effective to engage in mass-targeted campaigning—using large-scale data analytics by campaigns and tech companies to identify target audiences for campaigns to advertise to online.

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