Digital Campaigning in Canada: A Comparative Study
About the Project
For more than two decades, political parties and candidates have been engaging in digital campaigning. Digital campaigning refers to the use of digital technologies (e.g. websites, social media, mobile phones) by campaign organizations to inform, mobilize, interact and persuade voters. Digital technologies not only provide innovative ways to communicate with voters, they are thought to create new opportunities for democratic engagement. This project seeks to explore digital campaigns in Canada in a comparative manner. Despite the passing of two decades, Canada remains understudied in the digital campaigning literature. This project is guided by two research questions: (1) How do Canadian political parties, federal and provincial, employ digital technologies during the course of an election campaign and (2) what conditions influence the utilization of digital technologies by political parties during a Canadian election campaign?
These questions will be answered by examining the use of digital technologies by political parties during a federal election and five representative provincial elections. A content analysis of party websites and social media (Twitter and Facebook) will be conducted in each of the six campaigns. Content analysis is a method used to interpret meaning from the content of textual data; it is commonly used in digital politics research. Overall, the project will investigate the similarities and differences in digital campaigning in Canada by exploring the structure and content of the websites and social media of parties. It will also test the empirical conditions under which parties adopt different aspects of digital technology. In the international digital politics literature, there are several explanations to account for how campaigners make use of digital media particularly the incorporation of interactive and mobilizing elements. The explanations include resources/party size, ideology, party systems and inter-party competitiveness. The comparative research design of this project will allow for the testing of explanations within each digital campaign but also between parties across all the case elections.
This project differs from previous analyses of Canadian digital campaigning in a number of ways; first, this project includes provincial digital campaigns. While there is a growing literature on federal digital campaigning in Canada, far less has been published on the provinces. Second, this project is comparative. There have been calls in the international digital politics literature for more comparative research. It is only through comparison can we explore how different social and political factors impact digital campaigning. Third, this project explores multiple channels. Rather than exploring one digital technology as most Canadian studies, this project will explore both websites and social media (Facebook and Twitter), which are different media environments. On social media, users are active in the production process. Potentially, campaigning on social media could be more participatory and create a greater connection between parties and citizens.
This project makes a unique and innovative contribution to digital and Canadian politics. First, this project focuses on less obvious cases in a comparative fashion to engage with key debates in the international literature. And by focussing on provincial elections, the project also extends our understanding of Canadian elections. Overall, this project enable us to see both the enduring features of Canadian digital campaigning and those that shift over time. This research will ultimately culminate in a monograph that addresses all of these theoretical issues in one sustained analysis.