Online Political Campaigning During the 2014 Regional Elections In
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Media and Communication (ISSN: 2183-2439) 2015, Volume 3, Issue 4, Pages 35-44 Doi: 10.17645/mac.v3i4.368 Article Online Political Campaigning during the 2014 Regional Elections in Poland Paweł Baranowski Institute of Political Science, University of Wrocław, 51-149 Wrocław, Poland; E-Mail: [email protected] Submitted: 6 June 2015 | In Revised Form: 18 August 2015 | Accepted: 24 September 2015 | Published: 29 December 2015 Abstract This article is dedicated to the analysis and evaluation of political communication on a regional level. Without any doubt, the Internet revolution affected electoral campaigning on every level. Online campaigning before local elections is often marginalized by political scientists and other scholars researching political marketing. However, the question emerges: are the candidates aware of the possibilities that new media has brought to political communication? Content analysis of all the major online communication tools has allowed the author to analyze the patterns of using websites, official Facebook profiles and Twitter accounts of candidates during the 2014 Lower Silesian Regional assembly elec- tions. The Lower Silesian Voivodeship is among the fastest developing regions in Poland with high Internet penetration rate. Is the Internet campaign treated as a second-class way to communicate with potential voters, or is it perceived as an opportunity to reach electorate online? Keywords e-campaigning; Internet; new media; own media; Poland; political communication; regional elections; social media Issue This article is part of the special issue "Turbulences of the Central and Eastern European Media", edited by Epp Lauk (University of Jyväskylä, Finland). © 2015 by the author; licensee Cogitatio (Lisbon, Portugal). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribu- tion 4.0 International License (CC BY). 1. Introduction tion of communication technology. Thus, we can speak about pre-modern campaigning in the age of the press, Many political and communication scientists are stress- modern campaigning in the age of television and post- ing the role and importance of communication in the modern campaigning, which can be observed right politics (Canel, 1999, p. 15; Dobek-Ostrowska, 2007, now, in the era of new media. chapter 4; Gerstle, 1992, p. 13). The period of political The importance of new technologies in political campaign before elections is when the communication marketing has been stressed by many Polish scholars. with the potential voters becomes crucial for incum- As Garlicki (2010) mentioned, we can observe a signifi- bents and challengers, who are willing to obtain the cant role of the Internet in the transition from electoral mandate. campaigning to permanent campaign. Internet and The classical “golden triangle” of political communi- new media have been present in Polish election cam- cation by Richard Perloff (1998, p. 9) assumes, that the paigns since the nineties. For the first time, it has been discussion within politics is conducted by the leaders, used in 1997, during presidential campaign (Plit, 2008, the media and the public. New media and online com- p. 56), although due to low Internet penetration rate in munication shortens the distance between the leaders Poland, it was rather a marginal phenomenon. Further and the public, by allowing the establishment of direct, electoral campaigns began to develop the use of new computer-mediated interaction (Harvey, 2014, p. 36). media, and gave the very start of post-modernization The classical division of political campaigning by P. Nor- stage of political campaigning in Poland. However, the ris (1997, pp. 197-198) is taking into account the evolu- 2011 parliamentary elections was the first time, when Media and Communication, 2015, Volume 3, Issue 4, Pages 35-44 35 Internet was used by a broad spectrum of candidates. Cichosz, & Kobielska, 2013, p. 33). The author con- Scholars from Poland started to analyze election cam- cludes that apart from the access to a substantial paigns online, often criticizing politicians for poor de- amount of money, the Regional Assemblies is connect- sign of websites, which appeared like old, web 1.0 bul- ed with power and influence, and it is often the first letin boards. The revolution of social media and web step to the national politics. Not as prestigious as Eu- 2.0 forced candidates to implement interaction and in- ropean Parliament elections, but also very important teractivity as a vital element of an election campaign. for democracy and political system, local elections In relation to the stage of campaigning evolution, Po- had a much smaller budget for the electoral cam- land has been described by scholars as early post- paign. Especially, as the previous elections had cost modern. There are several empirical studies, which are political parties a significant amount of money. How- supporting that thesis (Baranowski & Jacuński, 2015; ever, the costs of constructing the website and rent- Borek & Jacuński, 2014), however none of the men- ing the hosting servers are constantly decreasing. The tioned research has been done based on candidates in presence in the social media doesn’t consume any fi- regional elections. nancial resources and can be very effective tool of in- A few months after the European Parliament cam- teractive, electoral communication. Have the candi- paign which took place in May 2014, another election dates for the local authorities adopted technological was conducted in Poland. The local elections are allow- innovations? ing citizens to choose their deputies to regional assem- blies, such as: Voivodeship Sejmik (regional assembly), 2. Research Framework municipal council and the mayor of the town, city or rural commune. The Lower Silesia Voivodeship Sejmik 2.1. Methodology (Lower Silesia Regional Assembly) is the assembly on provincial level, which has got the constitutional power The empirical method chosen by the author to evalu- of adapting the local law on the matters which are not ate the political campaign to Lower Silesia Assembly reserved for the central government. It may seem, that online is the content analysis. This method allows the the Voivodeship election campaign could be treated researcher to investigate the subject from both a quan- as a second-class and less important both for citizens titative and a qualitative perspective. and political actors. However, they could be treated The first step was to construct an original codebook as a warm-up before presidential and parliamentary dedicated to regional elections. Codebook consists of campaign. The result of regional elections in 2010 three, separate categories. Each category covered a (conducted on 21st of November) wasn’t the exact re- different medium owned by candidates. Categorization flection of further (9th October) 2011 parliamentary key dedicated to the websites consisted of 28 ques- elections, but the ruling party, Civic Platform main- tions, and analyzed the technological features of the tained its first position. Of course, there are a variety page, sharing potential, owners’ activity and possibili- of smaller parties and local electoral committees, ties of interaction with the candidate. The multimedia which are trying to obtain mandates during regional potential, newsletter possibility and static information elections. was also taken into account. These issues could indi- Polish scholars researching local elections, present- cate the assignment of a webpage to web 1.0 era. Sec- ed thesis of spatial identity (Bukowski, Flis, Hess, & ond categorization key with 20 questions investigated Szymańska, 2011, pp. 10). According to the authors, Facebook activity: standard popularity indicators, the similar conditions of living within the local society shared content and the intensity of posting. Finally, allowed for the construction of strong bonds among its third categorization key (10 questions) allowed the au- participants which may remain even if the conditions thor to evaluate candidates Twitter accounts. Every of existence would change. Therefore, in addition to category also covered multimedia content in the can- the statement, that parliamentary and presidency elec- didates’ entries on every medium. tions are more important, the regional elections should Research period was set to one month before elec- be treated by local communities as in popular proverb: tion date (from 16 October to 16 November 2014), “The shirt is nearer to the body than the coat”. As for which is the peak time of political campaigning in Po- the importance for political actors, apart from the nat- land. ural tendency of parties to mark their presence in eve- ry election, it’s enough to mention, that the budget ex- 2.2. Sampling penditure for Voivodeship Sejmik of Lower Silesia is estimated at 1,4 billion Polish Zloty (“Budżet wo- This research is interested in investigating the ways of jewództwa dolnośląskiego”, 2015). Katarzyna Kobielska, usage of candidates own Internet tools during electoral scholar researching local governance in Lower Silesia campaign to Lower Silesia Voivodeship Regional As- claimed that the game (election campaign to the Voi- sembly (Sejmik). Selected tools are: websites, official vodeship Sejmiks - PB) is worth the candle (Alberski, Facebook profiles and official Twitter accounts. Private Media and Communication, 2015, Volume 3, Issue 4, Pages 35-44 36 Facebook accounts were not taken into account for Research sample for this study covered 100% of all the reason: while making preliminary