DiCED is pleased to announce that our proposal Re-wiring and Restructuring Electoral Mobilization?: Assessing the Impact of the Pandemic on the Study and Practice of Political Campaigning has been selected by the UK Political Studies Association as their sponsored panel for this year’s American Political Science Association annual meeting in Quebec, Canada. 

Panel Abstract

Featuring studies of national elections between 2020 and 2021, the panel will seek to understand how election campaigning has adapted to the restrictions and opportunities imposed by the pandemic and governmental lockdowns, particularly with regard to the incorporation of digital technology. Featuring studies of national elections between 2020 and 2021, t will seek to understand how campaigners in a range of different contexts innovated with online tools (or not) in their attempts to mobilize voters during the Covid-19 crisis. Papers will address key questions of how far such adaptation is fundamentally rewiring and restructuring the way campaigns operate in a post-pandemic world. Is virtual the ‘new’ normal? Or will we see renewed value placed on in-person voter contact? Thematically, has Covid-19 lowered the bar even further to the exploitation of misinformation and conspiracy theory in campaign messaging? Finally, methodologically, how are scholars adapting to the post-pandemic environment to study GOTV activity. Papers will showcase new ‘hybrid’ methods of observing voters electoral ‘behaviour’ that link survey responses with online tracking data extracted from social media feeds. What are the new ethical and logistical challenges presented by these new highly personalised sources of information? How can they be safely shared and analyzed, and what new rich insights do they yield?

Our panel includes six papers, of which the provisional titles and proposed participants have been listed below:

• Contagion and Convergence in Election Campaigning in the Post-Pandemic Era? A Comparative Analysis on the U.S. 2020 Presidential and German 2021 Bundestag Elections.
  • Authors: Rachel Gibson, Esmeralda Bon, Peter Smyth and Jahandar Musayev (University of Manchester, UK)
• Pandemic and partisanship: evaluating the effect of COVID-19 on patterns of political approval and voting decisions in the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.
  • Authors: David Lazer (Northwestern University) Matt Baum (Harvard), Katya Ognyanova (Rutgers University and Jon Green (Northeastern University). USA
• How are voters persuaded? Combining Facebook and Survey panel data to unpack the effects of online political ads on party preferences in the 2021 Dutch General Election Campaign.
  • Authors: Xiaotong Chu, Rens Vliegenthart, Lukas Otto, Claes de Vreese, Sanne Kruikemeier (University of Amsterdam) and Sophie Lecheler (University of Vienna).
• How the Pandemic was politicised on Twitter in the 2021 German Federal Election: the growth of Emotion and Personalisation in German Politics.
  • Authors: Wiebke Drews and Jasmin Riedl (Universität der Bundeswehr München, Germany).
• Determinants of negative campaigning during pandemic times in Germany: Evidence from linked candidate surveys and social media data.
  • Authors: Marius Sältzer (GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences) and Sebastian Stier (GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences), Jürgen Maier (University of Koblenz-Landau) & Corinna Oschatz (University of Amsterdam).
• How the Far-Right Polarises Twitter: ’Hashjacking’ as a Disinformation Strategy in Times of COVID-19 and the 2021 German Federal Elections.
  • Authors: Philipp Darius, Centre for Digital Governance, Hertie School, Berlin, Fabian Stephany Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford and Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin

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