online media usage for political campaigning
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Online media usage for political campaigning
Investigating the usage of online media for professional communications in the
context of the US election campaigns 2008
by Thomas Euler
27th March, 2009
Abstract
The purpose of this report is to help developing an understanding of how the internet and
its multitude of different communication platforms, also known as ‘Web 2.0’ or ‘Social
Media’, influence political campaigning. In order to achieve this, a closer look is taken on
political online campaigning in general and the 2008 US election campaigns in particular.
Data of two surveys that were conducted after the 2008 elections is analysed in order to
identify the mindset of political Social Media users, to make predictions about their usage
of different online channels, and to uncover the role Social Media plays in citizens’ decision
making process about whether or not they volunteer for a campaign. At the end, the author
will conclude which implications the findings have on Public Relations for political
campaigns and recommend topics for future research.
Acknowledgements
To begin with, I want to thank my supervisor Habte Selassie for his guidance through this
project.
Furthermore, I’d like to thank Klaus Eck for introducing me to the topic of political online
campaigning 2 years ago and SurveyPro for their prompt and friendly support with all
technical issues.
Finally, I want to thank my girlfriend for her patience and love.
Table of Contents
LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................................................. iii
LIST OF FIGURES .............................................................................................................iv
1. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1
2. Literature Review ....................................................................................................... 2
2.1 Setting the framework ................................................................................................... 2
2.2 An introduction to online campaigning ......................................................................... 4
2.3 Areas of campaigning affected by the internet ............................................................. 5
2.3.1 Segmentation .......................................................................................................... 6
2.3.2 Delivering the message ........................................................................................... 7
2.3.3 Activating Citizens ................................................................................................. 11
2.3.4 Online Fundraising ................................................................................................ 13
3. Methodology............................................................................................................ 14
3.1 Description, justification of method and sampling ...................................................... 15
3.2 Research design: The survey set-up ............................................................................. 15
3.3 Limitations .................................................................................................................... 16
3.4 Information on the 2008 Post Election Survey ............................................................ 18
4. Findings ................................................................................................................... 21
4.1 Analysis of different online channels ........................................................................... 21
4.2 The mindset of political Social Media users................................................................. 25
4.2.1 Political interest and decision-making criteria ...................................................... 26
4.2.2 Perceived importance of the internet for the public sphere ................................ 26
4.2.3 Critical judgement of sources ............................................................................... 27
4.2.4 Government trust and satisfaction ....................................................................... 27
4.2.5 Summary ............................................................................................................... 29
4.2.6 Statistical difficulties ............................................................................................. 29
4.3 The influence of online campaign measures on the decision to actively participate in a
campaign ............................................................................................................................ 30
5. Conclusions and Recommendations .......................................................................... 30
5.1 Segmentation ............................................................................................................... 31
5.2 Delivering the message ................................................................................................ 32
5.3 Activating citizens ........................................................................................................ 33
6. Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 34
7. Appendices .............................................................................................................. 37
ii
Appendix A - The Online Media Usage Survey’s questions ............................................... 37
Appendix B - Pre-test ......................................................................................................... 45
iii
LIST OF TABLES
Table
1 Overall Participant Statistics 18
2 Information about the November elections on sources 21
3 Traditional media online users 22
4 Use of other online services for campaign related activities 23
5 Overall satisfaction and dissatisfaction crosstabulation 28
6 Trust in government crosstabulation 28
iv
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure
1 Political online information sources 24
1. Introduction
The aim of this report is to help developing an understanding of how the internet and its
multitude of different communication platforms, also known as ‘Web 2.0’ or ‘Social Media’,
influence public relations in the context of political campaigns. Some research has already
been carried out in this field; however, almost none of it provides a public relations angle
on the topic but derives from disciplines such as political sciences, social sciences or even
from technical disciplines. Therefore, this study aims to lay the ground for future PR
research in the field of political campaigning.
In order to achieve this, a closer look is taken on political online campaigning in general and
the 2008 US election campaigns in particular. After setting the theoretical framework in
which the study at hand is settled, the reader will be introduced to political campaigning
from a communications and public relations point-of-view and, thereupon, the internet’s
influence on several realms of political campaigns is addressed.
The specific interest of this report is the voter and how he uses Social Media in a political
context. Data of two surveys, which were conducted after the 2008 elections, is analysed in
order to identify the mindset of political Social Media users, to make predictions about the
usage of different online channels or tools and to uncover the role Social Media plays in
citizens’ decision making process about whether or not they volunteer for a campaign.
Finally, the author will conclude which implications the findings have on Public Relations in
a political campaign context and recommend topics for future research.
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2. Literature Review
2.1 Setting the framework
Public Relations and politics are interlinked literally since the first mention of the term
‘Public Relations’ in 1807 by US President Thomas Jefferson (Davis, 2007). Actors on the
political playground were and are one of the largest groups of those who demand Public
Relations and professional communication (Moloney, 2006). To be sure, the field of Public
Relations can not be narrowed precisely. Too many different academic disciplines influence
PR theory and in praxis, too, PR work has many facets making Public Relations a complex
field that can not easily be defined (Davis 2007; Fawkes 2008). As early as 1976 Harlow was
trying to come up with a general definition of Public Relations and found almost 500
different definitions of the term during his research. By today the number can be expected
to be even higher. This variety of definitions origins from a range of different views scholars
and practitioners alike have on PR (Davis, 2007), from seeing it primarily as a marketing
function to considering it as a valuable contributor to the process of balancing interests
within a society (Fawkes, 2008). Consequently, the author won’t define the term ‘Public
Relations’ but instead will approach the topic by demonstrating the necessary theoretical
angle on PR in a political campaign context.
When talking about Public Relations in this context a concept to consider is the public
sphere model from Habermas (1989). Simplified, he describes the public sphere as the
realm where private individuals come together to discuss political and other issues of public
interest in order to formulate a public opinion or will. This process demands the flow of free
and relevant information that can only be guaranteed with free press or media respectively.
Even though this concept has its limitations as, amongst others, Wood and Somerville
(2008) point out, the public sphere lays the foundation on which Public Relations happens,
especially in a political context. Here, PR has the objective to be an organisation’s
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‘spokesperson’ that expresses and advances its views within the public sphere in order to
enable the public sphere to make informed decisions and, on the other hand, reports the
public opinion to the organisation so it knows about the current state of public opinion and
can adequately react to it.
This thought is also reflected by the fourth type of Grunig and Hunt’s (1984) model of Public
Relations practise, the two-way symmetric communication. It describes organisational
communication that is foremost interested in balancing the organisation’s and its
stakeholder’s interests by relying on dialogues. It is based on mutual respect among all
parties and aims to create inter-party understanding, rather than trying to convince the
stakeholders of the organisation’s opinion.
For democracy being almost exactly like the formerly described, namely the attempt to
balance interests in order to achieve the best possible result for society, this model of
Public Relations can be considered an ideal and desirable state of political communication
where PR plays a major, contributing role in the democratic process (Cutlip et al., 2000).
However, in contrast to general political communications - as the communication of elected
administrations with the public -, for campaign communications - as the communication of
those who try to convince the constituency in order to become elected - , two-way
symmetric communication might not be the best practise. This is due to the inherent
competitive nature of election campaigns. Necessarily a campaign seeks to convince the
public of its campaign object (e.g. the candidate) being the best of all choices.
Accordingly, Two-way asymmetric communication better suits the object. As Grunig and
Hunt (1984) describe, this type also is bidirectional but communication is always in favour
of the sender, who wants to win recognition. Clearly, this type can be considered the basis
of election campaign communications. Whereas the campaign must listen to public opinion
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– from supporters and opponents alike - in order to maintain relevance and the ability to
respond, the major task is to stimulate advocacy and thereby winning the elections.
2.2 An introduction to online campaigning
According to Blumler and Kavanagh (1999) we have, by now, entered the third age of
political communication. Compared to the traditional, television-based, mass-
communication campaigns that dominated the 20th century, nowadays campaigns have
changed drastically. Modern communication technology affected first the media, which
became more fragmented and personalised, and then campaigning, which in 2004 for the
first time became more narrowed, less centralised and took feedback from citizens into
account. The main driver for this change was and is the internet and its widespread usage
(Vaccari, 2008).
Presidential campaigns use the Internet as an instrument since 1996. From then on, online
campaigns became an increasingly normal part of any political campaign on any
governmental level and their use and importance increased steadily (Druckman, Kifer and
Parkin, 2007). Whereas the first online efforts consisted of not more than a website, used
as an online brochure, nowadays online campaigns deploy a large range of technical
possibilities the internet offers. Hence, the campaign websites include a larger number of
multi-media features, start to become interactive and are designed to appeal to different
classes of voters at the same time (Vaccari, 2008). In 2008, as Smith and Rainie (2008, p.2)
couch, “the internet has moved from the periphery to the center of national politics”.
Farrel and Webb (2000) argue that as campaigns became more professional over the years,
not least because they didn’t flinch from spending high amounts of money and resources to
investigate and incorporate new communication technologies, they changed in certain
areas: Instead of deploying ad-hoc communicated messages, campaigns became almost
permanent and increasingly emphasised personal contacts in order to reach the voters.
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Plus, they were run by professional communication agencies or consultants who adopted
principles from corporate marketing and PR to politics. Moreover, Farrel and Webb (2000)
identified the trend to decentralise the campaigns’ organisation. The latter development
has increased even further thanks to the internet. Instead of, for instance, organising
supporter meetings in central campaign offices, the campaigns provided volunteers with
the tools to organise themselves - an approach first seen in 2004, when the Dean campaign
made use of meetups.com, which allowed supporters to arrange local meetings with like-
minded people. Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign developed an own tool that fulfilled the
same purpose and included it into the MyBO (My Barack Obama) Social Network.
Successfully, it seems: 35,000 groups of volunteers held 200,000 offline events (Lutz, 2009).
Moreover, campaign websites began to include features that aimed to activate the users,
meaning they were asked to contribute to the campaign in any possible way. The term
grassroots campaigning refers to those kinds of campaigns which are largely based on
activism from the ground. In a political context that describes citizens who perform
voluntary work for a campaign they support. The Internet offers many different
opportunities to mobilise citizens in order to stimulate this active participation in a
campaign (Klotz, 2007; Vaccari 2008). This issue will be discussed in more detail later on.
2.3 Areas of campaigning affected by the internet
The Internet affects the whole process of working in professional communications. As
Breakenridge (2008) points out, it changed almost every area that PR – and therefore
campaigning as well – is concerned with, from research and monitoring to spreading the
message amongst several target audiences etc. In the following part the author is going to
address some areas of political campaigns that have been influenced by the internet.
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2.3.1 Segmentation
As with any marketing or PR campaign for a product, proper segmentation of the target
audience is a critical success factor in campaigning too. Since the key to segmentation is the
data or information it relies on, digital technology is a gift for every campaigner because it
made the collection and distribution of relevant information much easier (Howard, 2005).
According to Howard (2005), the amount and - more importantly the detail - of available
political information about citizens has drastically increased thanks to new media. For
instance he mentions polls, voter profiles and social networks as sources for this
information. Therefore, the degree to which it is possible to tailor messages is significantly
higher. As a result, today’s campaigns aim not to mass communicate their messages
anymore, but narrowcast them. This means, targeting particular people with particular
messages which are based on the profile information that has been collected beforehand
(Howard 2005; Vaccari 2008). The increasingly popular technique of narrowcasting also
supports Farrel and Webb (2000), who argue that political campaigns decreasingly try to
convince voters of their opinions but would rather design ‘products’ (e.g. programs,
messages, etc.) that fit the voters demand a priori. By tailoring messages to much narrowed
sub-segments of voters, it becomes easier to provide them with relevant, customised
information.
In the 2008 election period the Obama campaign executed segmentation and
narrowcasting to a degree not seen before. One key tool of the campaign was the use of
emails, sent to registered supporters. The email list contained more than 13 million
subscribers and over 1 billion emails were sent during the campaign. But instead of sending
standardised emails to all subscribers, the campaign created over 7000 different email
variations which were targeted at different subsets of the supporters (Vargas, 2008). Those
were identified based on criteria like habitation, number or height of donations, age or
realms of political interest (Gensemer, 2009). In summary, the campaign tried to send only
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relevant information to its supporters in order to keep the engagement on a constant level
or even increase it.
With segmentation and narrowcasting having such a big importance for political
campaigning, it is surprising that little is known about psychographics and mindsets of
social media users in terms of political attitudes. Do they judge based on a candidate’s
personal appeal or his political program? Are they more interested in political topics than
other citizens? Such questions shall be answered with this study. Accordingly, the first
research question this work seeks to answer is: “What is the political mindset of social
media users and does it differ from other citizens’?”
2.3.2 Delivering the message
One major objective of any political campaign is to deliver the key messages of its
candidate. Online, a campaign can use a variety of different tools and channels to reach this
goal. Of course, the central spot to find information about a candidate’s political program is
his or her website, which offers information in certain degrees of depth in order to attract
several different types of visitors (Vaccari, 2008). However, online-content is increasingly
diffused and no longer centralised (Gueorguieva, 2008). Videos can be found on Youtube,
profiles on Facebook or MySpace and information about what someone is doing right now
on Twitter. On blogs people publish articles and engage in conversations of their interest
(Thevenot, 2007). All these platforms have been utilised for the 2008 presidential
campaigns. What all of them have in common is the fact that they aren’t unidirectional
communication tools but allow users to give feedback. Therefore, they are not easily
comparable to the classic media (TV, radio, print) because they enable a far broader group
of people to produce and publish content. Hence, campaigns can engage with audiences to
a degree impossible with the old media (Howard, 2005).
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In the past, academics and popular writers alike blamed political communications and
marketing in particular for being responsible for lower political interest and less political
engagement throughout society. They argued that by using professional mass marketing
techniques the direct and personal contact between citizens and their representatives
decreased (Norris, 2000). However, as Farrel and Webb (2000) pointed out, modern
campaigns follow a trend back towards more direct interaction. This development must to
a large degree be attributed to the internet, which is a bidirectional communication tool
and almost forces campaigns to use its inherent possibilities of interactive communication.
On the other hand, it has been suggested that the relatively slow adoption of two-way
communication features in past political campaigns is due to the candidates’ need to fully
control their messages (Druckman, Kifer and Parkin, 2007). Indeed, this communication
principle of One-Voice Policy hardly matches the conditions of the digital communication
environment, where the phenomenon of Social Media enables and motivates every user to
participate in online conversations (Beal and Strauss, 2008). Thus, the resulting lack of
control when using Social Media for one’s campaign might well represent a risk for strategic
communication. Even though the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama choose to
incorporate a large degree of Social Media and was very successful in doing so, future
research is advised to develop a model for risk analysis of using or not using Social Media in
campaigns with critical messages.
However, since social media becomes increasingly popular amongst internet users it is hard
to imagine that future campaigns will be able to ignore it. Hence, it is necessary to find out
which channels must be considered when planning a campaign and to identify in which way
different channels can be used most effectively. Is the micro-blogging tool Twitter for
example a good tool to spread short, persuasive political statements or should it rather be
used to inform supporters about the campaign? The resulting second question to be
answered with this research is: “Which channels should be used and for which purpose?”
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According to Carr and Stelter (2008) the online communication environment also
influenced how traditional media companies had to work in order to cover the campaigns
in a way that appeals to modern users who employ a variety of channels for gaining
information. In the 2008 elections the boarder between online and offline, as well as
between other media forms, diminished. Traditional media outlets like the TV networks
incorporated online content to a large degree in their news coverage plan. Online they co-
existed and competed with all kinds of information outlets like blogs, video-hosters and
information presented directly by the campaign. As a result, they did not any longer have
the monopoly of serving as the gatekeeper for information between the campaign and the
public. As Louden (2008, quoted in Carr and Stelter 2008, p.1) stated: “The role of
gatekeepers and archivists have *sic!+ been dispersed to everyone with Internet access.”
Moreover, political information is not increasingly consumed unfiltered. This means,
according to research by Smith and Rainie (2008) that citizens use the opportunities given
by the internet to access content that was not edited by media gatekeepers beforehand.
Their research showed that 39% of those adult Americans who have internet access looked
at unfiltered political documents, for instance speeches, debates or position papers. Based
on those findings they suggest that more political decisions are based on the voters own
interpretation of unfiltered political information, rather then relying on the meaning given
to it by mainstream media.
Indeed, this can be perceived as a desirable result because it reverses a development called
media malaise - for example described by Blumler and Gurevitch (1995). They argue that
the increasingly adversarial appearance of political communications, for instance
manifested in form of messages that are often reduced to catchy slogans, influences mass
media coverage of politics and campaigns in a way that the public debate about serious
political issues decreases in quality in exchange for more attention-catching, dramatised
stories with a popular appeal. Even though not yet fortified by research, it can be assumed
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that people who grapple with thematic political information online have an increased
knowledge about the political agenda, hence can make better, more informed decisions
and contribute to quality debates about political issues and to the public sphere
accordingly. Similar causalities have been discovered for broadsheet newspaper reading
and, on a lower level, watching television news by Newton (1999), who argues that not the
form but the content of a medium defines how recipients are finally influenced. The effects
the relatively easy access to extensive political information online and to unfiltered political
documents in particular has on the state of the public sphere are recommended to become
subject of future research.
In summary, the internet and Social Media in particular influence how messages and
information are delivered to and looked for by citizens. There is a high diversity of websites,
from Social Networks to news websites to official campaign websites, where users can find
information. Most of these platforms provide some opportunity or another for user
interaction, making the internet a conversational medium rather than a static one for
pushing out messages. Also, the form of content presented online can vary, as the internet
allows publishing content from simple text to video and many other forms. Moreover, the
web influences how traditional media outlets work. This has implications on how
information should be presented to them by professional campaign communicators. Finally,
surely a key attribute of the internet, is the easy access to publishing tools for everybody
who uses the internet. The traditional gatekeepers don’t solitarily give meaning to political
issues anymore nor are they the only people to play a critical role for a campaigns success.
During the 2008 elections a number of stories broke on the internet or was reinforced by
online events that influenced the course of the campaigns (Smith and Rainie, 2008).
Therefore, campaigns have to find ways to increase the amount of favourable content and
make sure it can be found easily. In short: the communication environment online is highly
complex and demands an integrated strategy to deal with it.
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2.3.3 Activating Citizens
"The overall point is that election campaigns matter not only in their ability to influence
individuals’ levels of information, attitudes, and vote choices, but more importantly in their
capacity to activate and mobilize political talk among citizens." (Pan et. Al., 2006, p.???)
Pan et. Al. (2006) argue that informal political talks are part of the democratic process and
that such talks are stimulated by political campaigning. Thus, campaigns directly contribute
to the vitality of Habermas’ (1989) political sphere. However there are indicators for these
informal talks being not only important for the democratic opinion-forming process.
General marketing research indicates that word-of-mouth information about products is
one of the most influencing forms of communication - sometimes even more powerful than
the personal opinion (Myers and Robertson, 1972). The Edelman Trust Barometer 2008
(Edelman, 2008) found that the most credible source is ‘a person like yourself’. Therefore,
the next question that is set to be answered with this study is: “Is political Information
received from a personally known source during an informal online conversation more
credible than other information?”
In addition, online campaigns try not only to stimulate talks among citizens but also to
activate citizens, meaning they start to do voluntary work either online, offline or both. As
Vaccari (2008) points out, a typical campaign-website visitor might already agree to the
candidate’s program and ideas. Now, the website’s objective is to push him to the next
stage of becoming a supporter who actively engages in the campaign and tries to convince
others. This engagement is not restricted to the digital space, where activists send letters to
editors or friends, place banners on their websites or write supporting blog posts etc.
Instead, it is a campaigns objective to transform this effort into the real life as well, where
activists for instance make phone calls, go door-to-door or place signs in their garden (Klotz
2007; Lutz 2009). "Campaigns saw it as their task to coordinate volunteers so that relatively
small individual efforts helped achieve a mass scale of mobilization." (Vaccari, 2008; p. 657)
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To accomplish this, campaigns use the benefits of online communication for easy and, more
importantly, cost-effective organisation by providing the necessary communication
infrastructure to the volunteers (Vaccari, 2008). Such features were already adopted by a
majority of Senate candidates’ websites in the 2004 election cycle (Klotz, 2007) and both,
McCain and Obama used them on their websites in 2008 (Project for Excellence in
Journalism, 2008). Because these tools are cheap and easy to use, Vaccari (2008) argues
that participation in general becomes easier and less time-consuming, which leads to a
lower threshold for becoming active. According to him this creates a win-win situation for
the activists as well as the campaign officials because the former can invest just the amount
of time and energy that they can afford and the latter have the opportunity to direct
information and resources almost in real-time. Overall, the degree of participation from
volunteers has increased thanks to the higher flexibility online campaigns offer to their
activists (Vaccari 2008; Klotz 2007)
In order to actually turning campaign supporters into activists, campaigns must engage
them. Vaccari (2008) found, that it is necessary to create a feeling between citizens and
campaign staff of knowing each other personally. An example given by Vaccari is that mails
have to be personally signed by high-profile campaign officials, so that emotional and
relational bonds develop between the activists and the campaign. Gronbeck and Wiese
(2005) pointed out that the 2004 elections showed such signs which they call
repersonalisation. This refers to the reversion of the trend of constant decline of personal
interaction between presidential candidates and voters as well as between voters and
political institutions, spotted during the 20th century. The re-established personal
interaction was mainly driven by digital technologies, which supported interactive
communication between voters, candidates and campaigns. This new, direct way of
communicating with each other has also influenced the citizens’ expectations regarding
politicians and their behaviour after the elections. A study from Smith (2008) for the Pew
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Internet and American Life Institute shows that 51 percent of those people who registered
online as a supporter of Barack Obama during the 2008 elections, expect some kind of
ongoing communication directly from the new administration, for example via email or
status updates on a social network (e.g. Facebook). Furthermore, 68% of those people who
voted for Obama and engaged online during the election campaign plan to support
Obama’s policy agenda in the next year by pressing others to support it too. This indicates
that relations between politicians and their supporters can last longer than the campaign
itself.
2.3.4 Online Fundraising
Another major objective for today’s online campaigns is to raise funds. For the first time we
discovered the potential of online fundraising for political campaigns in 2000 when McCain,
running to become president elect, raised over a million dollars online (Lutz, 2009). Then, in
2004, Kerry raised 82 million dollars online compared to Bush’s re-elect campaign that only
collected 17 million on the Internet (Vaccari, 2008). This discrepancy strongly indicates that
there might be effective and less effective ways to collect funds online. Surely a very
effective approach was chosen by Obama’s campaign in 2008. 3 million people donated 6.5
million times online for Obama adding up to a sum of over 500 million US Dollars in online
donations (Vargas, 2008).
The Obama Campaign was the first campaign to instrument online and social media for
reaching objectives from fundraising to interconnecting supporters that elevated the online
part of the campaign to its top-level. It draw lessons from some former campaigns-
especially McCain’s in 2000 which was the first campaign that conducted successful online
fundraising and the 2004 Dean campaign which made use of meetup.com to arrange offline
meetings of local supporter groups- and is considered as a groundbreaking example for
excellence in online campaigning (Lutz, 2009).
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To conclude, the aspect of activating citizens is a major objective of political online
campaigns. However, little is known so far about the initializing moment, when a person
who is interested in a campaign decides to become an active part of it. The findings of the
discussed research prove that campaign officials successfully use the internet as an
important tool to co-ordinate volunteers and collect funds. Also, campaign websites have
done a good job in collecting sign-ups for voluntary work and - by making this process
easier - helped to increase the total number of volunteers. Still, it can only be speculated if
the campaign websites (or any other online campaign-activity) was pivotal for making the
decision to support the campaign actively. Therefore, the fourth research question to be
answered with this study is: “Have online campaign measures influenced a significant
amount of citizens in a way that they decided to volunteer for a campaign?”
3. Methodology
Now, that the theoretical and practical environment in which the research takes place is
clarified, in a next step the author is going to outline the approach of this study to answer
the research questions that are:
1. What is the political mindset of social media users and does it differ from other citizens’?
2. (As a part of the first question) Is political Information received from a personally
known source during an informal online conversation more credible than other
information?
3. Which channels should be used and for which purpose?
4. Have online campaign measures influenced a significant amount of citizens in a way that
they decided to volunteer for a campaign?
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3.1 Description, justification of method and sampling
All research questions relate directly to attitudes, mindsets and behaviour of citizens who
use the internet as a source for political or campaign information. Since the US elections in
2008 were the most recent, nation-wide elections that have shown signs of a large amount
of online campaign deployment, they are an ideal object of investigation. Accordingly, the
author set up an online survey targeted at US citizens that were 18 years and older at the
time of the US elections. In order to compensate a lack of responses to this survey, raw
data of the 2008 Post Election Survey from the Pew Internet and American Life Project
(2009) was analysed as well.
3.2 Research design: The survey set-up
A set of 23 questions in 10 blocks was designed in order to receive the necessary
information to answer the research questions. The most important questions are going to
be explained in the next paragraphs. The complete questionnaire can be found in the
Appendix A.
After an introduction text that, as Bradley (2007) proposes, included information about the
researcher, the topic and a privacy statement, the survey started with a filter question. It
was implemented for qualification purposes in order to assure that only US citizens being
18 or older would participate. Who did not match this criterion was directly transferred to
the end of the survey.
In the next question participants were asked to rate ten items on a five-pole Likert-scale in
terms of their agreement. The items represented short statements reflecting on attitudes
and self-evaluation of the participants toward certain realms, for instance their political
interest, the personally perceived importance of the internet as source for political
information or the trustworthiness of information found within online Social Networks, to
name a few. This question was chosen to be the start of the survey since it does not ask any
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daunting questions but some that might stimulate the participants’ interest by asking for
their opinion on potentially interesting subjects.
After this, participants were asked to select the media types they used as source for
political information. As Bradley (2007) suggests, the survey software was set up to present
these items in a random order to minimise the order effect and the tendency of less
accurate answers given towards the end of a list due to participants’ boredom and a loss of
concentration. Whereas no detailed differentiation was made between traditional media
channels (e.g. no different networks or different programmes), online channels were
investigated in more detail compared to most former surveys, which most often asked
about use of ‘the internet’ – a practice that just started to change in recent years and didn’t
accommodate the variety of channels that were subsumed in the term ‘internet’. However,
such differentiation is necessary for this study on online campaigning.
In the follow-up question the formerly selected sources of political information should be
rated in terms of credibility. Items not chosen in the former question were filtered. The
scale used for the ranking is a Likert-scale extended to 7 poles in order to allow for a more
differentiated judgement, especially important in cases when participants use a large
variety of different information sources.
3.3 Limitations
Three major limitations regarding the set-up of the survey must be mentioned. First of all,
in order to recruit a representative sample of participants, it is not an unproblematic and
completely valid approach to simply put a link to the survey on a website and ask users to
participate. Berekoven, Eckert and Ellenrieder (2006) describe the problem of this approach
called self recruiting: To start with, it is impossible to collect data about non-respondents.
Furthermore, it is likely that those individuals who decide to participate are more
interested in the topic than the average of the population is. This leads to problems
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concerning a study’s representativeness. Therefore, a widespread and valid approach is the
n-th-visitor method, where a pop-up is presented to every n-th visitor of a website, asking
him to fill in the survey. Another valid method is based on ePanels that are compiled
according to the survey’s targeted population in order to find a representative sample
(Synovate, 2001).
However, applying these methods demands resources – either money or a large database
of individuals – that were not available to the author. Several attempts asking companies,
which offer ePanels, for support failed also. Therefore, the author had to distribute the
survey on his own. 50 blog or online newspaper editors were emailed with an info-text
about the study and the plea to publish a link to the survey. Moreover, links to the survey
were posted on a variety of internet forums, Facebook groups as well as in blog comments
and on Twitter. In order to reach individuals from a broad field of interests, blogs and
forums where chosen whatever their topic was. Still, it must be assumed that the
participants recruited in that way are not representative for the overall population of US
citizens of 18 years and older and might have an increased interest in the surveys topic
compared to the average.
This directly relates to the second limitation. For finding results that are representative for
the population, especially in the context of online campaign influence, the internet is not
the ideal medium. According to data from the Pew American Internet and American Life
Project, 25% of all Americans don’t have any internet access, neither at home or at the
workplace. Therefore, it is not possible to reach those 25% with the survey. Telephone
interviews would have been the better option but due to a lack of resources they were not
realisable.
The third limitation is at the same time the most important one: Even though many
different efforts were taken to promote and distribute the survey among US citizens, no
18
significant sample size could be achieved as table 1 indicates. Therefore, the data collected
with the survey cannot be considered representative.
Table 1. Overall Participant Statistics
Viewed 491
Started 67
Completed 45
Completion Rate 67.2%
Passed Qualification 29
Qualified Completed 15
Qualified Completion Rate 51.7%
3.4 Information on the 2008 Post Election Survey
However, to solve this problem the author chose to use the data collected from the Pew
Internet and American Life Project (2009) with the 2008 Post Election Survey. The survey
focuses on internet usage during the 2008 elections race and has many similar questions to
the Online Media Usage Survey designed for this study. Data from the relevant parts of the
2008 Post Election Survey questionnaire was used to substitute the lack of representative
and valid data that results from the small number of participants in the survey designed for
this project.
An excerpt of the study’s methodology will provide the necessary information to put the
results into context:
“The results in [...] are based on data from telephone interviews
conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International between
November 20 to December 4, 2008, among a sample of 2,254 adults, 18
and older. For results based on the total sample, one can say with 95%
confidence that the error attributable to sampling and other random effects
is plus or minus 2.4 percentage points. For results based Internet users
(n=1,591), the margin of sampling error is plus or minus 2.9 percentage
19
points. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical
difficulties in conducting telephone surveys may introduce some error or
bias into the findings of opinion polls.
The sample [...] is a random digit sample of telephone numbers selected
from telephone exchanges in the continental United States. The random
digit aspect of the sample is used to avoid “listing” bias and provides
representation of both listed and unlisted numbers (including not-yet-listed
numbers). The design of the sample achieves this representation by random
generation of the last two digits of telephone numbers selected on the
basis of their area code, telephone exchange, and bank number.
New sample was released daily and was kept in the field for at least five
days. The sample was released in replicates, which are representative
subsamples of the larger population. This ensures that complete call
procedures were followed for the entire sample. At least 10 attempts were
made to complete an interview at sampled households. The calls were
staggered over times of day and days of the week to maximize the chances
of making contact with a potential respondent. Each household received at
least one daytime call in an attempt to find someone at home. In each
contacted household, interviewers asked to speak with the youngest male
currently at home. If no male was available, interviewers asked to speak
with the youngest female at home. This systematic respondent selection
technique has been shown to produce samples that closely mirror the
population in terms of age and gender. All interviews completed on any
given day were considered to be the final sample for that day.
20
Non-response in telephone interviews produces some known biases in
survey-derived estimates because participation tends to vary for different
subgroups of the population, and these subgroups are likely to vary also on
questions of substantive interest. In order to compensate for these known
biases, the sample data are weighted in analysis. The demographic
weighting parameters are derived from a special analysis of the most
recently available Census Bureau’s March 2007 Annual Social and Economic
Supplement. This analysis produces population parameters for the
demographic characteristics of adults age 18 or older, living in households
that contain a telephone. These parameters are then compared with the
sample characteristics to construct sample weights. The weights are derived
using an iterative technique that simultaneously balances the distribution
of all weighting parameters.”
(Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2009b)
Of course, both studies are not absolutely equal and therefore a lack of representative data
exists in some areas that are crucial for answering this research’s questions. Hence, the
author is going to deploy a two way approach in the findings section. The results of the
analysis of the relevant data from the 2008 Post Election Survey are referred to as
representative findings, whereas the results of the data analysis of the Online Media Usage
survey designed for this research are called trends to underpin the fact that they are not
representative. Analysis was conducted with SPSS to deploy several statistical methods. The
raw data of the 2008 Post Election Survey can be found on the website of the Pew Internet
and American Life Project (2008).
21
4. Findings
The findings educed from the 2008 Post Election Survey show that the internet played an
important role during the 2008 elections. 1591 or 70.6 percent of the participants use the
internet at least occasionally for surfing and/or sending emails. Of those, 74.5% are online
political users, who used the internet for any activity related to the 2008 campaigns –for
finding news or information about the campaign and/or communicating with others about
the elections, politics or the campaigns. This represents 52.6% of the overall US population.
4.1 Analysis of different online channels
First of all, a closer look is taken at the media channel consideration. In the 2008 Post
Election Study online political users were asked if they had received information about the
November 2008 elections via a variety of different online channels. Table 2 shows the
results of the frequency analysis of this data.
Table 2 (data from 2008 Post Election Survey). Did you happen to get any news or
information about the November elections from the following online sources? [Base “online
political users” n=1186]
Source Value Frequency Percent Cumulative
Percent
Portal news services like Google News or
Yahoo News Yes
No
Don’t know
591
590
5
49.8
49.7
0.4
49.8
99.6
100.0
Network TV news websites such as CNN.com,
ABCnews.com, or MSNBC.com Yes
No
Don’t know
712
469
5
60.0
39.5
0.4
60.0
99.6
100.0
Websites of major national newspapers such
as USA Today.com, the New York Times.com,
or the Wall Street Journal online
Yes
No
Don’t know
382
800
4
32.2
67.5
0.3
32.2
99.7
100.0
Websites of local news organizations in your
area Yes
No
Don’t know
518
663
5
43.7
55.9
0.4
43.7
99.6
100.0
Issue-oriented websites Yes
No
Don’t know
283
876
27
23.9
73.9
2.3
23.9
97.7
100.0
The websites of state or local governments Yes
No
294
887
24.8
74.8
24.8
99.6
22
Don’t know 5 0.4 100.0
The website of alternative news organization,
such as AlterNet.org or NewsMax.com Yes
No
Don’t know
123
1056
7
10.4
89.0
0.6
10.4
99.4
100.0
The website of an international news
organization, such as the BBC Yes
No
Don’t know
257
922
7
21.7
77.7
0.6
21.7
99.4
100.0
The website of a radio news organization, like
NPR.org Yes
No
Don’t know
239
941
6
20.2
79.3
0.5
20.2
99.5
100.0
News satire websites like The Onion or The
Daily Show Yes
No
Don’t know
201
981
4
16.9
82.7
0.3
16.9
99.7
100.0
Fact-checking sites such as Snopes.com,
FactCheck.com, or Polifact.com Yes
No
Don’t know
232
948
6
19.6
79.9
0.5
19.6
99.5
100.0
From blogs that cover news, politics, or media Yes
No
Don’t know
292
884
10
24.6
74.5
0.8
24.6
99.2
100.0
Read someone else's commentary or
experience about the campaign or political
issues on an online news group, website or
blog
Yes
No
Don’t know
452
725
9
38.1
61.1
0.8
38.1
99.2
100.0
In the next step, the variables ‘did get info from network TV news website’, ‘did get info
from national newspaper website’, ‘did get info from local news organisation website’, ‘did
get info from radio news organisation’ and ‘did get info from international news
organisation website’ were combined to the variable ‘did get info from a traditional media
organisation website’. All respondents that ticked ‘yes’ for at least one of the sources were
counted as users of traditional media organisation websites. Table 3 shows the result for
this calculation.
Table 3 (data from 2008 Post Election Survey). Traditional Media Online Users. [Base
“Online Political Users” n=1186]
Value Frequency Percent Cumulative
Percent
Used traditional media organisation
website?
Yes
No
898
288
75.7
24.3
75.7
100.0
23
Henceforth, frequency analysis was conducted for the use of other online sources or
services respectively, based on data that was collected in other parts of the questionnaire.
Were necessary, more complex scales that asked for use frequency were recoded to simple
Yes/No nominal scales.
Table 4 (data from 2008 Post Election Survey). Frequencies: Use of other online
sources/services for campaign related activities [Base “Online Political Users” n=1186]
Value Frequency Percent Cumulative
Percent
Campaign website visited? Yes
No
497
689
41.9
58.1
41.9
100.0
Social Network used? Yes
No
380
806
32.0
68.0
32.0
100.0
Received official campaign Email? Yes
No
576
610
48.6
51.5
48.6
100.0
Watched official campaign or news
organisation online video?
Yes
No
556
630
46.9
53.1
46.9
100.0
Watched campaign related video
from other sources?
Yes
No
478
708
40.3
59.7
40.3
100.0
Used Twitter? Yes
No
99
1087
8.3
91.7
8.3
100.0
Based on those calculations it is possible to create a ranking of the most consulted political
online information sources, visualised in figure 1. The online outlets of traditional media
sources like newspapers, TV networks or radio stations were the most commonly
frequented sources amongst political online users for finding news and information on the
2008 elections and campaigns with 75.7% of them using it. Media online outlets are
followed by news portals as Google News (49.8%), official campaign emails (48.6%) and
online videos officially from the campaign or news organisations (46.9%). The most broadly
used sources that can be considered as Social Media are private videos related to the
campaign (40.3%) and someone else’s commentary on an online newsgroup, website or
blog. Social Networks were used in a political context by 32% of online political users.
Dedicated news, politics or media blogs reached 24.6% of them and the often hyped
24
microblogging service Twitter, which was just founded in 2006, was already used by every
12th (8.3%) political online user in a campaign related way. This data can be considered as
valid and representative.
Henceforth, based on the data of the Online Media Usage Survey some more specific
investigation on the ways different online tools were employed by users. Participants were
asked if they used different channels only to get information on one campaign only or on
two or more. This approach allows making predictions regarding the use of an online
medium in terms of partisanship. In other words: are those users who connected
themselves with the campaign on a particular medium likely to be supporters of that
campaign or are they rather neutral information seekers that do not exclusively expose
themselves to one campaign’s content.
Of those participants who subscribed to at least one candidate’s website RSS feed, 25.0%
only subscribed to one candidate’s feed whereas 75.0% subscribed to the feeds of two or
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Figure 1. Political Online Information Sources
Use by Political Online Users in % [n=1186]
25
more candidates. RSS subscriptions are therefore, as the non-representative data suggests,
rather a source for information than an expression of partisanship.
Email newsletter subscriptions and even following a candidate on the highly personal
Twitter are, probably contrary to some expectations, also no indicators for support of a
campaign or candidate respectively – at least when relying on the data of the Online Media
Usage survey. For subscribers of campaign email newsletters, 50.0% subscribed to at least
two campaigns’ newsletters and for Twitter followers of a candidate, 60.0% subscribed to
the updates of at least two candidates.
In contrast, friends on a Social Network like Facebook or MySpace and subscribers to a
YouTube channel can more likely be considered partisans of a campaign. Of all users that
had befriended at least one candidate on a Social Network, 71.4% added only one
candidate as friend and, moreover, every single subscriber to a campaign’s or candidate’s
Youtube channel in the survey sample subscribed only one channel.
To conclude, traditional media organisations are still the leading source for political news
online. However, they lost their position as information monopoly and compete with a
multitude of other channels, some of them highly driven by user generated content. The
2008 campaigns integrated many of these new channels into their communications mix and
were able to reach a large amount of citizens. However, these attempts are still in a period
of trial and error. In case the data about the relation between online activities and
partisanship can be verified in former research, assumptions on how some online tools are
utilised by users must be rethought and online communication strategies and tactics
adjusted.
4.2 The mindset of political Social Media users
In order to investigate social media users’ mindsets, those users who can be considered
political Social Media users were identified first. Based on the Online Media Usage Survey,
26
participants were classified as political Social Media users if they met specific criteria1.
These cases were selected and then analysed to achieve the following (non representative)
trend results.
4.2.1 Political interest and decision-making criteria
The majority (71.4%) of political Social Media users considers itself as being politically
interested, whereas only 14.2% of them do not think so. Furthermore, most political Social
Media users (57.1%) agree or strongly agree that the political program should be more
important than the personality of the candidate when making a voting decision. 14.3% are
undecided and 28.5% disagree. This trend to a program- rather than personality-based
decision making process is underpinned by the results for the statement “The personal
appeal of a presidential candidate is my most important criteria when making a voting
decision for or against a candidate”. A significant 64.3% of political Social Media users
disagree, 35.7% even disagree strongly. Only 14.3% agree or strongly agree. To test if this
attitude is manifested in actual behaviour, participants were later asked to choose criteria
from a multiple-choice list on which they had based their voting decision. The item with the
most mentions is the political program of a candidate, which was ticked by 91.7% of the
participants that voted in the 2008 presidential elections.
4.2.2 Perceived importance of the internet for the public sphere
Having the possibility to involve in online political dialogues is important for most (64.3%)
political Social Media users whereas only 14.2% don’t consider this opportunity as
important for themselves. Moreover, a vast majority (71.4%) of online Social Media users
think that the Internet enriches the political discussion because they can find more
opinions. Only 21.4% do not agree with that thesis and further 7.1% are undecided. These
1 Participants of the Online Media Usage Survey were considered as political Social Media users if
they had used either blogs, online videos or microblogging services as a source for political information or had subscribed to at least one candidate’s Twitter feed, befriended at least one candidate on a Social Network or had subscribed to at least one candidates Youtube channel.
27
findings indicate that users esteem the internet since it makes participation in the public
sphere relatively easy. Plus, participation itself is also important to them.
4.2.3 Critical judgement of sources
While the trend data suggests that the communication opportunities related to the internet
are highly appreciated by online Social Media users and perceived as positive, those users
don’t consume online content uncritical. Only 28.6% of them state that they trust the
political information found within their online networks (7.2% agreed strongly and 21.4%
agreed). On the other hand, 50% don’t trust their peers implicitly in political matters.
However, since the statement (“I trust on the political information I find within my online
network”) is rather undifferentiated and general, it would be a mistake to assume that
those information are generally not trustworthy. Instead, users are careful whom they trust
online, just as they do offline. Correspondingly, 42.9% judge political information as more
credible if received from a personally known source than otherwise. Another 42.9% neither
agree nor disagree. Even though it improves the credibility of a source if it is personally
known, political Social Media users don’t trust it automatically. It can be assumed that
other criteria like the perceived competence or knowledge of the source is taken into
account as well when judging a source’ credibility.
4.2.4 Government trust and satisfaction
The 2008 Post Election Survey did not measure attitudes to a large degree, so the amount
of information that can be educed from it regarding the mindset of political Social Media
users is limited. Only two questions were asked that measure attitudes. Those are “Overall,
are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in this country today?” and
“How much of the time do you think you can trust the government in Washington to do
what is right?”. The answers to these questions where compared between political Social
Media users and non-users via cross tabulation in order to find out if significant differences
exist in their attitudes regarding those items (see table 5 & 6 for the results).
28
Table 5 (data from 2008 Post Election Survey). Overall, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the
way things are going in this country today? * Social Media Users Crosstabulation
Social Media User?2 Total
No
[n=1278]
Yes
[n=976]
Q1 Overall, are you
satisfied or dissatisfied
with the way things are
going in this country
today?
Satisfied 193 161 354
Dissatisfied 1010 763 1773
Don’t know 53 37 90
Refused 22 15 37
Total 1278 976 2254
Table 6 (data from 2008 Post Election Survey). How much of the time do you think you can trust
the government in Washington to do what is right… just about always, most of the time, or only
some of the time? * Social Media Users Crosstabulation
Social Media User? Total
No
[n=1278]
Yes
[n=976]
Q2 How much of the time
do you think you can trust
the government in
Washington to do what is
right… just about always,
most of the time, or only
some of the time?
Just about always 47 22 69
Most of the time 186 156 342
Only some of the time 817 686 1503
Never 147 85 232
Don’t know 61 19 80
Refused 20 8 28
Total 1278 976 2254
The degree of satisfaction is low for Social Media users (16.5%) as well as non-users
(15.1%), without a statistically significant difference. Accordingly, dissatisfaction is at a high
level for both groups with 78.2% amongst Social Media Users and 79.0% amongst non-
users.
Trust in government decisions (total of “Just about always” and “Most of the time”
answers) is similarly low for both groups, 16.8% for non-users and 18.2% for Social Media
users. A statistically relevant difference between the two groups can be identified for
scepticism in government decisions (total of “Only some of the time” and “Never” answer
options). Whereas 79% of Social Media users are sceptical towards the government only
2 Similar to the approach chosen for the Online Media Usage Survey the variable ‚Social Media User‘
consists of all survey participants who stated to use at least one of the online tools or services that can be considered Social Media. This is: Online video, Twitter, Blogs or Social Networks.
29
75% of non-users are. A possible interpretation is that Social Media users are in general
quite critical, as suggested based on the trend data from the Online Media Usage Survey as
well.
4.2.5 Summary
As already stated, the findings based on the Online Media Usage Survey – that is most of
the presented information about Social Media users’ attitudes - are not based on
representative data and accordingly have a limited informative value. Therefore, before
being able to make definitive statements the data would have to be validated by means of
a second conduction of the Online Media Usage Survey, based on a larger, representative
sample. However, assuming the findings would indeed be certified, some information
about the mindset of political Social Media users can be educed from it.
First of all, they are likely to have a high interest in politics and prefer to make political
decisions based on the matters of a candidate rather than on his personality. Moreover,
they consider the online conversations about politics as a highly positive development.
They care for the political debate and think the internet is a valuable medium because it
allows for a broader participation in political talks. However, they are critical when deciding
which information or source to trust and don’t consume information without questioning it.
4.2.6 Statistical difficulties
Due to the small sample size, especially for non Social Media users, no statistical
comparison methods could be deployed based on the data from the Online Media Usage
Survey. However, when replicating the study and collecting a larger sample, correlations
between being or not being a political Social Media user and the value of different attitude
variables should be measured. Further statistical methods that were not deployed because
of the small sample size are discriminant analysis to find out if there are significant
differences between political Social Media users and non-users, as well as cluster analysis
30
based on the attitude measurement questions within the set of political Social Media users
in order to identify different sub-segments3.
4.3 The influence of online campaign measures on the decision to
actively participate in a campaign
In order to identify if online campaign communication did have an impact on citizens’
decision to volunteer for a campaign we asked participants of the Online Media Usage
Survey who stated that they had contributed to a campaign, how they had been
encouraged to do so. The identified trend, even though not representative, allows
suggesting that internet communication played indeed a major role in activating citizens.
Of those who contributed to a campaign, 33.3% stated they did so because they had been
regular volunteers in former campaigns and thus contributed naturally to the 2008
campaign. However, the other 66.7% claimed that it was some kind of online information
that encouraged them to participate. 16.7% became active after they received an email
newsletter in which they were asked to volunteer and another 16.7% found suggestions for
engagement on a candidate’s website. Finally, 33.3% stated they found information about
contribution possibilities on a Social Network and decided to participate as a consequence.
5. Conclusions and Recommendations
This study aimed to increase the understanding of political online campaigning, a relatively
new field that is, so far, only insufficiently covered by academic research. It is evident
throughout the report at hand that the media internet, and especially the interactive area
of Social Media, influences many realms of campaigns; from organisation to communication
to activating citizens for the campaign. The 2008 campaigns, especially Barack Obama’s,
pointed out which direction the development might take. Based on the assumption that the
3 Two-step Cluster Analysis was conducted based on the collected data but due to the small sample
size only one cluster was identified.
31
internet will continue its success and transform the traditional media landscape even
further, this study was conducted in order to supply the academic discussion and campaign
professionals alike with knowledge about the focal point of every political campaign, online
and offline alike: the voter. More precisely: The voter who uses new or social media in any
way related to politics or the campaign.
5.1 Segmentation
To begin with, this study represents a first attempt of investigating the mindset or
psychographics of those citizens that use Social Media in order to find information on
politics, elections or campaigns. Since those users add up to a significant amount of the
overall electorates, evaluating their attitudes and expectations regarding political
communication is necessary to identify a) how campaign professionals should deal with
those individuals and b) to empower further, in-depth research to identify implications on
the political debates in the public sphere. Even though the achieved sample size does not
allow making representative statements, the data at least indicates a direction.
The political Social Media user, as identified in this report, is highly interested in politics,
rather critical and likely to have a large political knowledge, on which his decisions are
grounded. Plus, he calls for opportunities to participate in political discussions. Therefore,
agents of the media malaise thesis who claim to have identified a decrease of political
interest amongst western democracy citizens and a political sphere that plays by the same
rules as the publicity-driven celebrity society seem to be wrong - at least in case of the
growing population of Social Media users.
For campaign professionals this means political Social Media users can not easily be
influenced by artificially created images. Therefore, online campaign communication should
take another direction. It must provide clear, fact-based information about candidate and
program. Moreover, as a result of the political Social Media user’s demand for online
32
conversation, campaigns should offer a space where discussions and dialogues can take
place online. It doesn’t really matter if this space manifests as discussion board, blog or chat
but it should exist and be easily accessible. Otherwise, it must be expected that the user
will find another place for opinion expression that is not as easily controllable as a
campaigns own platform.
5.2 Delivering the message
As addressed in the literature, there is a multitude of different channels online that can be
integrated in a communication strategy and then be employed by a campaign
(Gueorguieva, 2008). Based on the data of the 2008 Post Election Campaign the study at
hand identified which channels were the most commonly used and therefore provides a
worthy tool for practitioners and academics when having to judge a channel’s value.
Moreover, the study attempted to identify how different online tools are employed by
users. The discovered lack of a correlation between connecting with a campaign on
particular channels and partisanship for that campaign is an interesting finding. It indicates
that a large part of those users who connect to a campaign do so only for information
purposes without necessarily expressing their support for the campaign. Future research
must test this thesis for its validity. In case it will be verified implications result for
campaign practice. Tools that show a low partisanship-correlation are more effective when
being used in order to convince users of the campaign whereas those with a high
partisanship-correlation can effectively deployed for support and activism activation.
In addition, the study showed that information is perceived as being more credible if the
sender is personally known by the recipient. Accordingly, the repersonalisation of political
campaigns, identified by Gronbeck and Wiese (2005) is not only positive for the vitality of a
democracy but also can improve the credibility of campaign messages. However, it is not
that simple in practice. The research results also suggest that political Social Media users
33
are critical when deciding which source they trust in particular, even if they know it
personally. Therefore, campaign online activities can not simply reach out to randomly
chosen influencers in the Social Media sphere (e.g. Blogger, Twitter-users, Social Network
celebrities), hoping they spread the campaign’s messages to their peers and those will
believe. Such an approach most likely wouldn’t work. Instead, campaign communicators
must evaluate the political credibility of different Social Media influencers beforehand and
then pick only the most credible ones as mediators.
5.3 Activating citizens
Former research had already pointed on the internet as a new area for activism (= online
activism) and also indicated its ability to stimulate campaign contributions because it
simplified the process. Now, this research presented some hints for Social Media in general
and Social Networks in particular often being the impulse for individuals’ decision to
contribute to a campaign. This point of view adds a new dimension to the formerly
identified use for Social Media tools in recruiting volunteers: Until now the internet was
mostly seen as a tool that stimulates participation because it simplifies activism and thus
can mobilise those citizens, who did not yet participate in campaigns because of their
limited time or other resources. However, this report found leads that Social Media is also a
major tool for persuasion and can convince people to become active. Therefore, Social
Media can be considered as an important factor of influence on the ability of campaigns to
mobilise volunteers. Future Research is recommended to verify these findings.
34
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37
7. Appendices
Appendix A - The Online Media Usage Survey’s questions Even though you will find all questions here, it is more comfortable to access the original
online survey questionnaire at http://bit.ly/mediause.
Thank you for participating in this survey. This survey is part of an academic project and, therefore,
has no commercial purpose. It will take you approximately 5-10 minutes to complete the
questionnaire.Your participation in this study is completely voluntary. There are no foreseeable risks
associated with this project. However, if you feel uncomfortable answering any questions, you can
withdraw from the survey at any point. It is very important for us to learn your opinions.Your survey
responses will be strictly confidential and data from this research will be reported only in the
aggregate. Your information will be coded and will remain confidential. If you have questions at any
time about the survey or the procedures, you may contact me by email at the email address specified
below. At the end of the survey you have the opportunity to enter your email address in order to
receive a summary of the results as soon as the research is completed. Of course, your email address
won’t be linked to the given answers and entering the address is completely voluntary. Thank you
very much for your time and support. Please start with the survey now by clicking on the Continue
button below.Thomas Euler
Are you a US citizen and 18 years or older?
1. Yes
2. No
Please judge on a scale from 1 to 5 (1=strongly agree, 5=strongly disagree) to which degree you agree
to the following statements
1=strongly
agree
2 3=neither
agree nor
disagree
4 5=strongly
disagree
I consider myself as a politically interested person ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ I think the internet enriches the political discussion
because I find more opinions ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ The political program should be more important than
the personality of the candidate when making a
voting decision
❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏
Traditional media like newspapers and TV are the
best source for political information ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ I trust on the political information I find within my
online network ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ During the presidential elections 2008 I found some
news on-line which strongly influenced my voting
decision
❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏
Without the internet I most probably wouldn’t have
contributed to the campaign ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ The personal appeal of a presidential candidate is my
most important criteria when making a decision for or
against a candidate
❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏
I think political information is more credible when I
know the source personally ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ Having the possibility to involve in a political
dialogue on-line is important for me ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏
38
Did you vote on the presidential elections 2008?
1. Yes
2. No
3. n/a
Who did you vote for?
1. Barack Obama
2. John McCain
3. Chuck Baldwin
4. Cynthia McKinney
5. Bob Barr
6. Ralph Nader
7. other
8. n/a
On which of the following did you base your voting decision (multiple answers allowed)
1. The candidates political program
2. The candidate’s personal appeal
3. The candidate’s party
4. n/a
On a scale from 1 to 7 (1=very high; 7=no knowledge), rate your degree of knowledge about the 2008
presidential candidates’ political programmes.
1. 1 = Very high knowledge
2. 2
3. 3
4. 4
5. 5
6. 6
7. 7 = no knowledge
From which of the following sources did you get information about the political programmes?
Multiple Answers allowed
1. TV spots
2. Newspapers
3. Candidates’ websites
4. Newspaper websites
5. Weblogs
6. Candidates’ brochures
7. Party websites
8. TV programmes (eg political debates)
9. Microblogging Services (eg Twitter, Jabber)
10. Email
11. On-line videos
12. Radio spots
13. Radio programmes
14. Personally from campaign supporters
15. Other (please specify)
39
Please judge the credibility of each of the following sources you have used in order to gain
information about the political campaigns and programmes on a scale from one 1 (very high
credibility) to 7 (no credibility).
1 = very
high
credibility
2 3 4 5 6 7 = no
credibility
TV spots ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ Newspapers ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏
Candidates’ websites ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ Newspaper websites ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏
Weblogs ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ Candidates’ brochures
❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ Party websites ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏
TV programmes (eg political debates) ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ Microblogging Services (eg Twitter,
Jabber) ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ Email ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏
On-line videos ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ Radio spots ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏
Radio programmes ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ Personally from campaign supporters
❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ Other (please specify) ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏
40
Please rank your used information sources in relation to each other in the order of use frequency. Rate
your most frequently used source with 1 and the least used with 14. Put the other sources in between
in your felt order.4
4 The design of the scale appeared to be somewhat problematic. Usually one would use an
ordinal scale with answer options like ‘every day’, ‘3 to 6 days per week’, ‘1-2 days per
week’ etc. However, since some tools like email or twitter were expected to be used every
day by a significant amount of participants, such a scale would not have allowed for
differentiation between such tools, even if in reality a Twitter-user might look for updates
several times per hour whilst checking emails only twice a day. Hence, such a scale did not
seem to fulfil the purpose. The next option was to use a ranking scale starting from ‘1’ for
the most frequently used tool and then counting. But due to the fact that only those items
had to be rated that participants selected beforehand out of a large list, this approach
would not have allowed finding valid results. Because for a participant using 5 different
information sources the value ‘5’ would represent the least used source, compared to a
participant who selected 10 different sources where ‘5’ would represent medium use-
frequency.
As a result, a different and rather unusual approach was chosen. The participants were
asked to rank the frequency of their use for each source in relative relation to the other
sources. To avoid the problem that a variable number of items could lead to a also variable,
non-valid scale length, a 14-pole scale was given and participants were asked to rank the
most frequently used source as ‘1’, the least frequently one as ‘14’ and place the other
items in between, depending on their relative interrelation. Therefore, the results won’t
inform us about absolute usage of different sources nor will they enable us to make
conclusions which source was used with the highest frequency in absolute terms. Instead,
the data will show us a relational trend regarding use frequency for different information
sources in relation to each other.
41
1 =
most
freque
ntly
used
source
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 =
least
used
source
TV spots ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ Newspapers ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏
Candidates’ websites ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ Newspaper websites ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏
Weblogs ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ Candidates’ brochures
❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ Party websites ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏
TV programmes (eg
political debates) ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ Microblogging Services
(eg Twitter, Jabber) ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ Email ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏
On-line videos ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ Radio spots ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏
Radio programmes ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ Personally from campaign
supporters ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ Other (please specify) ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏
Did you inform yourself equally about at least two candidates’ programmes?
1. Absolutely
2. Almost
3. Clear dominance of one program
4. Only one program
Have you subscribed to one or more candidates’ Twitter feed?
1. No
2. Yes, to one Twitter feed
3. Yes, to two or more Twitter feeds
Have you subscribed to one or many candidates’ websites and/or blogs RSS feeds?
1. No
2. Yes, to one RSS feed
42
3. Yes, to two or more RSS feeds
Have you become friend with one or many candidates on a social networking site (eg Facebook,
MySpace, etc.)?
1. No
2. Yes, with one candidate
3. Yes, with two or more candidates
Have you subscribed to one or both candidates’ email newsletters?
1. No
2. Yes, to one email newsletter
3. Yes, to two email newsletters or more
Have you subscribed to one or many candidates on-line video channels (eg on YouTube)?
1. No
2. Yes, to one candidates video channel
3. Yes, to two or more candidates video channels
Have you in any way contributed to one of the campaigns? This means for example donated,
supported the campaign trail, made phone calls, wrote to other people, made a supportive blog post,
etc.
1. Yes
2. No
3. n/a
Please select what exactly you have done as campaign contribution.
1. Donated
2. Placed yard signs
3. Wrote letter/email to friends
4. Made phone calls
5. Sent emails to editors
6. Made a supporting blog post for one candidate
7. Hosted a reception
8. Helped at headquarters
9. Went from door to door
10. Placed bumper stickers
11. Placed banners on my website
12. Placed electronic buttons or logos on my website
13. Linked to the campaign on my website
14. Other (please specify)
How have you been encouraged to contribute to the campaign? If more than one item applies choose
the one which you would consider had the biggest impact on your initiative.
1. I was asked to support the campaign by relatives, friends, neighbours or other people I know
2. I received email newsletters and was asked to become active
3. I visited the candidates’ website and followed the suggestions for easy campaign contribution
4. I received a phone call and became active afterwards
5. I found information about contribution possibilities on any social media platform (eg
facebook, twitter, a weblog, or others) and became active afterwards
6. I watched a on-line video and became active because of the information or ideas I found there
7. I am a regular volunteer for political campaigns and hence contributed naturally
8. Other (please specify)
43
Besides the presidential elections, how regular do you use the following media in general on a scale
from 1 to 7 (1=Very often; 7=Never)
1 = Very
often
2 3 4 5 6 7 = Never
Newspapers ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ Newspaper Websites ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏
Weblogs ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ Social Networks ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ On-line videos ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏
TV ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ Radio
❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ Microblogging Services ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏ ❏
You are almost done! Finally, please answer a few questions about yourself.
How old are you? Please choose the group you fit into.
1. 18-24
2. 24-34 years
3. 35-44 years
4. 45-54 years
5. 55-64 years
6. 65-74 years
7. 75+ years
8. n/a
Are you male or female?
1. Male
2. Female
3. n/a
Please select the state you currently live in.
1. Alabama
2. Alaska
3. Arizona
4. Arkansas
5. California
6. Colorado
7. Connecticut
8. Delaware
9. Florida
10. Georgia
11. Hawaii
12. Idaho
13. Illinois
14. Indiana
15. Iowa
16. Kansas
44
17. Kentucky
18. Louisiana
19. Maine
20. Maryland
21. Massachusetts
22. Michigan
23. Minnesota
24. Mississippi
25. Missouri
26. Montana
27. Nebraska
28. Nevada
29. New Hampshire
30. New Jersey
31. New Mexico
32. New York
33. North Carolina
34. North Dakota
35. Ohio
36. Oklahoma
37. Oregon
38. Pennsylvania
39. Rhode Island
40. South Carolina
41. South Dakota
42. Tennessee
43. Texas
44. Utah
45. Vermont
46. Virginia
47. Washington
48. Washington, D.C.
49. West Virginia
50. Wisconsin
51. Wyoming
52. n/a
What is the highest level of education you have completed?
1. Less than High School
2. High School/GED
3. Some College
4. 2-Year college degree (Associates)
5. 4-Year college degree (BA, BS)
6. Masters degree
7. Doctoral degree
8. Professional degree (MD, JD)
9. n/a
45
Appendix B - Pre-test Before distributing the survey publicly, it was pre-tested among a group of ten Public
Relations students. Feedback was collected for the questions:
Does the survey technically work without mistakes?
Are questions problematically worded and would therefore possibly influence the answers?
Are the questions easily understandable?
Problems occurred for 3 items on the Likert-scale in question two because they did seem to
stimulate central tendency bias. Accordingly, the wording was changed in order to increase
the statements ability to discriminate. In a second test amongst the same pre-test group
the questions appeared to work.
Also the 14-pole rating scale in question 9 seemed to provide for some confusion.
Therefore, the instructions were written again in a more precise form. As a result, the
question and scale were understood correctly in the second pre-test.