PLATFORMS AND OUTSIDERS IN PARTY NETWORKS: THE EVOLUTION OF THE DIGITAL POLITICAL ADVERTISING NETWORK Bridget Barrett A thesis submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media. Chapel Hill 2020 Approved by: Daniel Kreiss Adam Saffer Adam Sheingate © 2020 Bridget Barrett ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Bridget Barrett: Platforms and Outsiders in Party Networks: The Evolution of the Digital Political Advertising Network (Under the direction of Daniel Kreiss) Scholars seldom examine the companies that campaigns hire to run digital advertising. This thesis presents the first network analysis of relationships between federal political committees (n = 2,077) and the companies they hired for electoral digital political advertising services (n = 1,034) across 13 years (2003–2016) and three election cycles (2008, 2012, and 2016). The network expanded from 333 nodes in 2008 to 2,202 nodes in 2016. In 2012 and 2016, Facebook and Google had the highest normalized betweenness centrality (.34 and .27 in 2012 and .55 and .24 in 2016 respectively). Given their positions in the network, Facebook and Google should be considered consequential members of party networks. Of advertising agencies hired in the 2016 electoral cycle, 23% had no declared political specialization and were hired disproportionately by non-incumbents. The thesis argues their motivations may not be as well-aligned with party goals as those of established political professionals. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES .................................................................................................................... V POLITICAL CONSULTING AND PARTY NETWORKS ................................................................................ 4 COMMERCIAL ACTORS IN DIGITAL POLITICAL ADVERTISING ......................................................... 8 RESEARCH QUESTIONS .................................................................................................................................11 METHODS .........................................................................................................................................................12 DATA COLLECTION............................................................................................................................................12 CREATING THE NETWORKS ................................................................................................................................17 MEASURES .......................................................................................................................................................19 RESULTS............................................................................................................................................................21 DISCUSSION ......................................................................................................................................................31 PLATFORMS ARE CONSEQUENTIAL MEMBERS OF PARTY NETWORKS .....................................................................32 OUTSIDERS IN THE BUSINESS OF POLITICS ...........................................................................................................34 LIMITATIONS ...................................................................................................................................................36 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................................................39 APPENDIX 1. .....................................................................................................................................................42 APPENDIX 2. .....................................................................................................................................................44 APPENDIX 3. .....................................................................................................................................................58 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................................. 111 iv LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1. Types of companies in each electoral cycle network………………………………….. 21 Table 2. Types of political committees in each electoral cycle network………………………... 22 Table 3. Nodes, edges, components, and density each cycle…………………………………….23 Figure 1. Network visualizations each election cycle, with platforms included and excluded…………………………………………………………... 24 Table 4. Nodes with highest betweenness centrality each election cycle……………………….. 1 Table 5. Political and commercial agencies inside and outside the 2016 agency network……... 27 Table 6. Political committees inside and outside the primary component of the 2016 agency network by partisanship and committee type……………. 27 Figure 2. 2016 cycle network with only agencies and political committees……………………. 28 Table 7. Number of times types of political committees hire types of agencies in the 2016 agency network……………………………………………..29 Table 8. Counts of agencies’ membership in dyads and components of three or more nodes in the candidate-only network……………………………………..29 Table 9. Counts of political committees’ component membership in the 2016 candidate-only network……………………………………………………….. 30 Table 10. Counts of connections between types of company and types of candidate committees……………………………………………………………... 30 Political communication scholars started studying digital political advertising as soon as political campaigns started using digital campaigning strategies (Howard, 2006). The overwhelming focus of digital political advertising research is on its content and effects. This research yields important findings. While the direct effects of targeted digital ads on vote choice are often null (Broockman & Green, 2014; Hager, 2019), there is some limited evidence that this technology can be effectively used for mobilization (Haenschen & Jennings, 2019). Substantial research has also shown that in terms of its content, digital advertising differs significantly from television advertising. Digital political ads have more diverse goals than television advertisements (such as more mobilization and fundraising appeals), are less negative, less policy focused, and more ideologically aligned (Klotz, 1998; Borah et al., 2018; Fowler et al., 2019; Franz et al., 2020). Attention to these topics has only increased since the 2016 US presidential election as unprecedented portions of campaigns’ budgets were spent on digital ads and foreign actors used them to fuel division and resentment among Americans (Williams & Gulati, 2018; Kim et al., 2018). Yet, despite the significant attention to digital political advertising over the past twenty years and particularly after the 2016 election, there is no comprehensive accounting in the academic literature of the companies that strategically purchase digital ad space for political campaigns. Dommett, Kefford, and Power’s (2020) research into the players in digital campaigning makes a clear call to better understand the role of companies and other actors external to political parties in electoral politics. As they note, “few attempts have hitherto been made to map the ecosystem of actors who support party activities” and argue that “there is a need to map the 1 ecosystem of actors that support parties’ digital (and indeed non-digital) campaigns” in order to better understand how modern parties are organized and operate (p. 6). While their research focused on Australia and the United Kingdom, the ecosystem has yet to be mapped in the United States as well. In the US political party system, researchers now consider many of these actors external to formal political party organizations but working towards the same electoral goals (such as political consultancies) as members of extended party networks (Galvin, 2016). There is growing recognition of US parties as “informal ‘networks’ or ‘long coalitions’ of interest groups, activists, campaign professionals, non-profit organizations, social movement groups, media outlets, formal party organizations, and other various groups working toward common purposes” (ibid, emphasis added, p. 316). Understanding how these coalitions are connected and how actors enter and exit the network is paramount to understanding changes in party structure and downstream consequences on the broader political system. Political consultants are clear members of these networks, serving as partisan allies to the major political parties and spreading communication strategies and information to candidates (Kolodny & Logan, 1998; Nyhan and Montgomery, 2015). Companies specializing in providing digital advertising services to campaigns have reliably been considered political consultancies in the literature (Johnson, 2015). The industry of digital advertising within digital politics more broadly is of particular interest not only because of its potential aforementioned effects on vote choice and mobilization (Haenschen & Jennings, 2019; Borah et al., 2018; Fowler et al., 2019; Franz et al., 2020) but also because of the concerns that have been raised about the ethical uses of microtargeting, invasions of political privacy, and second-order effects on trust in political institutions (Barocas, 2012; Bennett, 2015; Karpf, 2019).