New Publication in Political Communication

Mike Cowburn, Research Fellow in the Chair of European Politics, has a new publication in Political Communication that tracks how German political parties and politicians use social media both during and outside of election campaigns across a thirteen-year period (2010 to 2022). Cowburn and his co-authors show that campaign periods exert a discernible impact on the communication patterns of political actors, serving as evidence against the idea of a “permanent campaign” online. Parties and politicians use different language, with different posting patterns, and receive different forms of engagement in campaign periods immediately prior to an election. They also identify longitudinal shifts in the supply and demand of political communication on social media, which suggest an increasing sophistication of digital campaigning techniques and concerns about message saturation among parties; consequently, individual politicians drove long-term increases in posting frequency, potentially contributing to an increasingly personalized political environment.