Does new media technology drive election campaign change?

Transcription

1 Information Polity 15 (2010) DOI /IP IOS Press Does new media technology drive election campaign change? Rune Karlsen Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, and Institute for Social Research, Po. box 1097 Blindern, 0317 Oslo, Norway Tel.: ; Fax: ; Abstract. In the last decade or so the influence of the new information and communication technologies has received increasing attention in studies on election campaigning. However, little has been done to link the influence of ICTs on campaigning with the extensive literature on the impact of technology on society. My main concern in this paper is to relate a discussion of technological influence on society to a discussion of campaign change. In so doing I emphasize that the influence of new media technology is constrained by countervailing forces that restrain and shape the effects. Furthermore I argue that such countervailing forces will differ from one political system to the next depending on the features of the campaign environment. Hence, I relate the influence of technology in general and the influence of the new ICTs in particular to the hybridization perspective of campaign change, and discuss the influence of technology on the essential features of the so called third stage of campaigning in this perspective. I argue that new technologies shape and are shaped in interplay with existing campaign practices and traditions maintaining distinct national patterns of campaigning. Keywords: Election campaigning, technology, ICTs, campaign change 1. Introduction Speculations about the influence of an emerging media technology seldom tend to underestimate the potential influence. For example, the telephone was forecasted to foster the growth of downtowns, democratize hierarchic relations in large organizations, increase job mobility, promote national integration and centralize political campaigns [40]. In a similar manner the introduction of ICTs produced (and still produces) much speculation about the influence on society. To mention just a few, ICTs have been forecasted to overload citizens with information, revitalize democratic participation and deliberation, and end the age of mass communication. 1 It appears that when the potential influence of an emerging media technology is considered, there is a risk of exaggerating the influence through technological deterministic visions of the impact. On the other hand, there is a danger of being too critical and dismiss any influence of the technology because nothing new has really happened. For example, Paul Lazarsfeld once suggested that if social researchers had been around to evaluate the impact of the printing press a decade or so after its invention, they would have concluded that the device was not very significant. Printers mainly produced the same old texts like the bible, which was already available in the tiny literary community [42, p. 4]. However, 500 years later scholars ascribe everything from growth of censorship 1 E.g. [1,4,12,41,45] /10/$ IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved

2 216 R. Karlsen / Does new media technology drive election campaign change? to the development of national culture to the invention of the printing press. 2 In a similar manner, the early speculations concerning ICTs were confronted with empirical studies claiming that nothing new really came with the new technology: The new media represented politics as usual [32]. In the literature on campaigning, media technology is considered a driving force for change. Indeed, the introduction and impact of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) are considered the defining aspects of an emerging new stage of campaigning [18,10,19,37]. However, little has been done to link the influence of ICTs on campaigning with the extensive literature on the impact of technology on society. This is the main concern in this paper as I relate the influence of technology on society to a discussion of campaign change. In so doing I emphasize that the influence of new media technology is constrained by countervailing forces that restrain and shape the effects (e.g. [30,243,41,35]). Furthermore I argue that such countervailing forces will differ from one political system to the next depending on the features of the campaign environment. Hence, I relate the influence of technology in general and the influence of the new ICTs in particular to the hybridization perspective on campaign change. I argue that different features of new technology might apply to different campaign environments, and when applied they are shaped in relation to existing campaign practices. The result is preservation of distinct national patterns of campaigning. The paper proceeds as follows. I begin by addressing the literature on campaigning and the central role played by ICTs in what is considered a new campaign period. Then I address the literature on the impact of technology on society, and relate this to the hybridization model of campaign change. In the concluding part I discuss the technological influence on essential aspects of the so called third stage of campaigning in a hybridization perspective of campaign change. 2. Campaign modernization and the influence of new media technology Campaigning in advanced democracies is asserted to have gone through an evolutionary process of gradual modernization [37], see also [10,18,19]. Three periods of campaigning are identified: a newspaper stage, (pre-modern campaign), a television stage (modern campaing) and a digital stage (postmodern campaign). The suggestion appears to be that campaigning in advanced democracies will end up in the third stage, characterized by extensive use of the new information and communication technologies (ICTs). The most important factors dividing the three periods are the two principal technical changes in media technology, namely the development of television in the early 60s, and the new information and communication technologies in the early 90s. Hence, media technology enjoys a prominent position as a force of change. The first stage is characterized by the strong ties between parties and voters. Preparations were few and sporadic, and the target audience was made up of fixed social categories. Consequently, campaign communication tended to be through the party controlled newspapers, mass rallies and canvassing, and aimed mostly towards mobilizing voters. The parties and the politicians were in charge of the campaign, and there was minimal use of agencies and consultants. In the 1960s television introduced a new type of election campaign referred to as the second stage. Specialist campaign committees laid careful campaign preparations long in advance of the election. With television almost everyone consumed the same news, thus the number of people who received political information increased considerably. Consequently, 2 See Eisenstein for an account of the Printing Press as an agent of (fundamental) change, and see Briggs & Burke for a modification of this approach [11,17].

3 R. Karlsen / Does new media technology drive election campaign change? 217 parties developed campaign strategies centered on a single, coordinated national message that aimed to win voters across different social categories. Campaigning was centralized, and substantial resources were devoted to public relations while leading politicians received media training. Moreover, this period saw a growing prominence of agencies and specialist consultants, but politicians were still in charge. The third stage of campaigning coincides with the introduction of new ICTs. The period is characterized by the arrival of the permanent campaign [10]. Campaign preparations are organized by well-established campaign departments. Campaign communication is claimed to be more consumer-oriented, which involve greater use of feedback to adapt the message to suit the audience. In this third period the campaign organization is staffed by campaign professionals, and there is extensive use of political consultants and agencies. It is not clear whether it is the politicians or the political consultants who are in charge. Essential in our context is how the technological development is perceived as a driving force behind such professionalization [20]. The three-stage framework outlined above conveys an image of a modernization process where technological innovations are important factors to mark the division between the periods. However, this perspective as well as the literature on web campaigning does not reflect much on exactly how the influence of new technology on campaigning should be understood. In order to relate the influence of ICTs to perspectives on campaign change, I first discuss the literature concerning the impact of technology in general. This literature emphasizes the interaction between technology and countervailing forces in society which agrees with a hybridization perspective of campaign change. 3. Does technology make history? In studies of technological innovations there is always a risk of obsessing with technology as a causal factor [35]. The concept of technological determinism labels an approach that identifies technology as the central causal element in processes of social change. This position is seldom argued explicitly in the literature, but is implicit in work speculating on and predicting the consequences of new technology. The position is explicit in what has been referred to as medium theory which focuses on the technological aspects of the media beyond their content. Marshal McLuhan is arguably the most well-known medium theorist with his famous catch phrase: The medium is the message. 3 He advanced a version of technological determinism that each medium shapes our senses in such a way that certain social outcomes will almost be inevitable. Neil Postman adopted this thinking in his work on how television encourages particular ways of thinking [43]. These notable exceptions aside, most scholars who consider the influence of technology on society would, arguably, more or less agree with the classical historian of technology, Melvin Kranzberg: Technology does not appear in a vacuum, but in a social matrix and interacts with society [30, p. 37]. Indeed, Kranzberg has argued against what he calls the false dilemma of technological determinism: The technology is society and society cannot be understood without its technological tools [31]. In his now classic essay, Does Technology Make History?, Heilbroner argues that technology imposes certain social and political characteristics upon the society it is introduced into [24]. However, he decided on what he called a soft version of technological determinism: While acting on society, technology also reflects the influence of socioeconomic forces on its development. In much the same manner, in his work on technologies of communication and free speech, Pool argues that the interaction between the new technologies and existing institutions can be described as soft determinism [41, p. 5]. Technologies have generic qualities that make a difference in how they are used. However, institutions that evolve in 3 See [33,34].

4 218 R. Karlsen / Does new media technology drive election campaign change? response to one technological environment persist and to some degree are later imposed on what might be a changed technology. Pool s example is that systems of regulation that emerged for the use of a scarce spectrum for broadcasting tended to be imposed on more recent technologies that no longer require them. In addition, simple versions of technological determinism fail to take account of the differences in the way things happen at different stages in the life cycle of technology. In the 1920s motion pictures had to be shown in a place of public assembly. From the 1980s VCRs made it possible to view movies in the privacy of your own home. However, in the meantime an industry had established studios, theaters, unions, funding and advertising practices [41, p. 6]. Moreover, media habits had been created as well. Going to a movie had become an integrated part of people s lives. Both the established institutions and the existing media habits constrained the influence of the new technology. To sum up, the evolution and uses of new technologies are not exclusively due to the nature of the technology nor to the economic or cultural system into which it is introduced, but rather reflect the interactions of these factors [35, p. 18]. Consider radio as an example. What we now consider radio, a model for broadcasting news and entertainment, took two decades to develop [16]. Although the technology is more or less the same today as when it was introduced, the meaning of the technology was different. The inventor of the radio, Marconi, envisaged a wireless telegraph and marketed his products towards major customers like the navy and shipping companies. The social forces that shaped the direction of radio technology towards broadcasting had not coalesced. The corporate consolidation of the industry, the government regulation of the electromagnetic spectrum, the idea of profiting from producing household radio devices, the press coverage of the new invention, and the pioneering work of amateur radio enthusiasts, interacted to create the medium as we know it today. As stated initially, the introduction of ICTs produced considerable, and sometimes even wild, speculation about the social impact. Suggestions include paralyzing individuals with an overload of information, as well as allowing a direct plebiscitary democracy not practiced since the days of the ancient Athenian polis. 4 The forecasts concerning the effects on democracy were particularly optimistic, and much of the early work on ICTs and politics speculated on how the technology would revive political participation, create new forums for dialog and even lead to direct democracy by giving media control to the users [45,12, and e.g. 4 for a discussion]. The early optimistic literature has (rightly) been criticized for not taking into account the history of media technology. Hence, countervailing forces that might constrain and shape the technology and the uses of the technology were overlooked [35,50]. Nonetheless, each new medium has technological capabilities that affect the delivery of text, sound and images. The Internet can potentially offer everything that all earlier media combined have offered: text, sound, images as well as interactivity [15, pp ]. The traditional mass media by nature discourage two-way communication, and have kept the number of public voices at a minimum. The unique promise of the new communication media were captured by Tomita [49]. As visualized in Fig. 1, he identified a so called media gap in the media of the late 1970s between the dominant mass media, and the limited person-to-person media. The vertical axis in the figure shows the delay between the time the message was sent and when it was received, whereas the horizontal axis shows the size of the audience. This organization led to the discovery of a gap in the structure of existing media a gap that was ready to be filled by the new media technology. In his pioneering work on the impact of ICTs, Neuman emphasizes what is evident from the figure: The new media do not necessarily rule out mass communication, rather they complement existing media and media use [35]. His main concern, however, is that the technological push of ICTs will encounter 4 E.g. [1,4,14,42,45]. Neuman presents a list of speculations and forecasting [35, pp. 5 6].

5 R. Karlsen / Does new media technology drive election campaign change? 219 Fig. 1. The media gap (from Tomita [46]). countervailing forces that restrain and shape effects. He identifies two such forces or boundaries: the political economy of the media and the psychology of the mass audience. The predominance of large media conglomerates on the Internet is likely to increase, and their dominant economic view pushes in the direction of a common-denominator, one-way communication. Moreover, although new media technology renders new forms of public participation possible, most of us have ingrained habits of passive, half-attentive media use that are not likely to change substantially due to new technological possibilities. The ingrained media habits will constrain the potential of the new media [35]. To sum up, media technologies are embedded in ongoing social processes, and in order to understand their influence on society, and campaigning, one has to consider the countervailing forces that shape the technology as well as the interaction between technology and these forces. Some countervailing forces are of a general nature, meaning that they will act as boundaries in most systems. Others are context-specific and will differ according to the features of the campaign environment. This becomes evident in the next section when I discuss the hybridization perspective on campaign change [39]. 4. Campaign evolvement as a hybridization process The three-stage framework of campaign change describes an evolutionary process of gradual modernization [37]. This view resembles the notion of Americanization which suggests that campaigning in most countries will converge on the American campaign through a diffusion process of modes of campaigning first developed in the US. However, Norris rather describes the change as a modernization process rooted in technological and political developments common to many advanced democracies [37, p. 140]. Farrell & Webb state that the framework should be understood as a heuristic device that aids our understanding of campaign change [19, p. 106] and state that the campaign environment will affect the

6 220 R. Karlsen / Does new media technology drive election campaign change? nature of campaigning [19,37, pp. 108,140]. 5 Still, in which manner the campaign environment affect the nature of campaigning remains somewhat unclear within this framework. Some recent work has pointed to the importance of contextual and institutional factors to explain different effects of the new technology in different countries [2,3,51]. In this respect we will see that the hybridization perspective of campaign change is very helpful [39]. The hybridization perspective emphasize that campaign change depend on contextual, historical and cultural constraints which vary between campaign environments [39]. 6 Such constraints will curb and shape change as new campaign techniques and practices will fuse with existing practices. Plasser is evidently influenced by debates in other fields of social research, and particularly in the debates on and attempts to theorize about globalization [5,21]. For example Robertson insists that globalization does not mean that the world is becoming culturally homogeneous [46]. What he calls homogenizers tend to primarily focus on the presence of the universal in the particular. 7 Robertson rather labels the process glocalization, which is highly different in content and consequences. It implies that globalization in the broadest sense, the compression of the world has involved and increasingly involves the creation and the incorporation of locality, which largely shape the compression of the world as a whole [46, p. 40]. Moreover Pieterse also argues against the interpretation of globalization as the idea that the world is becoming more uniform and standardized through a technological, commercial and cultural synchronization emanating from the West [38]. He contends that globalization should be perceived as a process of hybridization, in which forms become separated from existing practices and recombine with new forms in new practices. Plasser evidently draws on this literature when he argues for a hybridization perspective on campaign change [39]. Whether and how systems adopt new campaign practices depend on a range of contextual factors. When introduced in a system, campaign techniques and practices will be met by severe constraints in the form of existing campaign traditions and practices. Hence although, in our context, new technology offers opportunities, campaign innovations will be formed in interplay with and fused with the existing practices. Plasser presents the following contextual factors as important for the transnational adoption of campaign practices [39, p. 79]: Candidate- vs. party-centered campaign styles The electoral system (e.g. majority or plurality vote system vs. proportional election system, density of the election cycle, candidate vs. party elections) The system of party competition (e.g. number of party activists, dominant cleavages within the electorate, ability of the organization to mobilize party followers) The legal regulation of election campaigns (e.g. public vs. private campaign financing) The degree of professionalization of election campaigning (e.g. professional sophistication of campaign management, campaign expertise and use of political consultants) The media system (e.g. public vs. dual vs. private media systems, differentiation of the media system, level of modernization, professional roles of journalists, autonomy of mass media, degree of media competition) 5 However, passages like the suggestion is that the American campaign entered this stage from about 1988 onwards; arguably some European countries are only just entering this stage today [19, p. 106], gives the impression of an historical account of campaign modernization, and imply that campaigning is becoming more homogeneous. 6 Cf. Norris mediating factors [37, pp ]. 7 According to Robertson in the first generation of globalization debates there were two main contestants, the homogenizers, that included Giddens and what he refers to as a number of Marxists and functionalists and the heterogenizers that he claims included Edward Said and Stuart Hall [46].

7 R. Karlsen / Does new media technology drive election campaign change? 221 The national political culture (e.g. homogeneous vs. fragmented cultures, hierarchical vs. competitive political cultures, degree of trust in the political processes, political involvement, high vs. low turnout cultures) The degree of modernization in society (degree of social differentiation, industrialized vs. information society, socioeconomic mobility) The differences from one campaign environment to the next related to these factors will have consequences for the nature of campaigning and how new campaign practices are utilized, and Plasser offers a discussion of these factors and some consequences [39, pp ]. For now, let us just consider a couple of examples. First, a candidate-based majority system fosters an individualized, decentralized campaign strategy that concentrates on the district level. During US congressional campaigns the national party committees concentrate their resources on 30 to 40 competitive races. In a proportional system there are few (if any) decisive battleground districts that determine the election, and the strategy tends to be party-focused, centralized and nationwide. Furthermore, what makes sense in one campaign context might be of little use in a different campaign environment. For example, establishing a War Room based on US and UK experiences in an Austrian parliamentary campaign, a small country with only one public TV station and not more than five nationally distributed newspapers was, according to Plasser, an absolutely useless endeavor [39, p. 76]. As the examples imply, contextual factors are not independent of, but rather influence, each other. For example, majority systems invite a focus on the candidates while systems of proportional representation tend to strengthen the parties [47, p. 750]. Based on the contextual factors listed above, Plasser distinguishes between a US Style and a West- European Style of campaigning. These two types should be considered ideal types, especially as there are considerable differences from one West-European country to the next. This distinction is nevertheless relevant in our context as the influence of ICTs should be expected to differ according to many of the features that characterize the difference between the US Style and a West-European Style. Table 1 presents the US Campaign Style compared to the West-European Campaign Style. From the table it is evident that campaigning in the US and in Western Europe is different in many respects. Consequently, new technologies encounter different boundaries. The US Campaign Style is candidate-centered, capital-intensive, money-driven, consultancy-based, highly professionalized, highly individualized, and regionalized in focus, with considerable emphasis on voter-targeting and TV ads. The European Style on the other hand is party-centered, labor-intensive, publicly financed, managed by party staff, moderately professionalized, and highly centralized, with a nationwide focus and little use of micro-targeting strategies and TV ads. These factors are also related. For example, candidatecentered campaigns entail independent consultants, while party-centered campaigns and strong party organizations foster internal campaign professionals. Paid TV ads increase the need for fund-raising, while free TV time for political broadcasts and public financing of parties make fund-raising less relevant. 5. Technological influence on campaigning in a hybridization perspective Most of the features that characterize the third stage of campaigning accounted for above, are related to new technology. Indeed, in the literature, ICTs seems the implicit cause of the new campaign period. However, as the campaign environment differs from one political system to the next, the countervailing forces that curb and shape its influence will differ as well. In what follows I discuss the technological influence on some of the essential features of the third stage of campaigning in a hybridization perspective. The difference between a candidate- and a party-centered campaign will arguably have consequences for both the supply and demand side of political websites. Ward et al. argue that the British experience

8 222 R. Karlsen / Does new media technology drive election campaign change? Table 1 US campaign style compared to West-European campaign style (from Plasser [36, p. 83]) US style Candidate-centered Capital-intensive Money-driven Paid TV ads Consultancy-based Highly professionalized Highly individualized Regionalized campaigns Focus on potential voters West-European style Party-centered Labor-intensive Publicly financed Free TV time for political broadcasts Managed by party staff Moderately professionalized Highly centralized Nationwide campaigns Focus on electorate at large concerning the Internet and campaigning is always going to be more low-key than the US experience [50]. This is not because of less Internet use in the population, but because the incentives for politicians and voters to use the Internet are stronger in a candidate-centered systems like the US than in a system with more focus on the parties, like the British. The incentives for individual candidates to utilize the Internet are arguably stronger in a candidate-centered campaign than in a party-centered campaign, as candidates running for election have great need to communicate basic information about themselves to the electorate. This is closely related to the electoral system, as any electoral system that allows for personal voting provides incentives for candidates to market themselves. Consequently, personal websites and blogs have been common in countries with a high degree of personal voting like Finland [13]. Voters in a candidate-centered campaign will also have greater need to learn about the candidates. Hence, the incentives to go online to learn about the candidates running for election are probably stronger than in a party-centered campaign where the same parties always run for election. In the US context the Internet has had the most influence concerning organizing, financing and mobilizing party electorates. This was obvious in Howard Dean s bid to become the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004 [25], which was widely considered by scholars and commentators alike as the final breakthrough of the Internet in electoral politics (see [23, p. 100]), and even more so during Obama s presidential campaign four years later. Hence, in ten years some US campaign organizations had moved beyond thinking of the website as an electronic brochure and viewed it as a type of electronic headquarters [22, p. 10]. However, as I discuss in what follows, the US experience concerning ICTs influence on fundraising, organization and mobilization is to some extent less relevant in a West-European context. West-European campaigns rely mostly on public funding while campaigning in the US relies heavily on fund-raising. The Internet offers opportunities concerning fund-raising, especially concerning smaller donations. Although somewhat disputed, the 2008 Obama campaign apparently made a great success of receiving small donations from numerous sources through the website. However, in systems where campaigns are publicly financed and there is little culture for fund-raising, online opportunities should not be expected to increase fund-raising to the same extent or in the same manner. Indeed, Anstead emphasize how online fundraising in the US is the result of existing traditions while institutional arrangements have restrained the potential of the web in Britain in this regard [2]. Although campaign organizations in the US have moved from considering the website as some kind of electronic information-brochure to a type of electronic headquarters, ICTs have not really changed the fundamentals of campaign organization and strategy [22]. For example, the strategy of Obama s New Media Department was to make old techniques, like call centers, more efficient [48]. Chris Hughes, leader of the Social Networking part of the New Media Department, stated that When computer applications

9 R. Karlsen / Does new media technology drive election campaign change? 223 really take off, they make something people have always done and make it easier for them to do it. And maybe bigger. 8 The director of Obama s New Media Department, Joe Rospars elaborated: We didn t invent the idea of our supporters calling one another. We just made it a lot easier. 9 Moreover, with just two parties, the mobilization potential for presidential races in particular is arguably greater in the US than in the multiparty parliamentary systems of Western Europe. Still, the Internet or new technologies did not cause the Obama movement. Rather the technology provided an excellent way of organizing the movement and put it to good use in the election campaign. In many parliamentary multiparty systems, the grass-roots and campaign activists are mostly the rank and file party members, and the possibilities of recruiting numerous new activists during a campaign are limited. Furthermore, although there are few studies on the subject, volunteer campaign activists are not used for canvassing and telephone calls to the same extent or in the same manner as in the US presidential campaign. However, the Norwegian Labor party is indeed influenced by the Obama campaign philosophy concerning mobilization, but the strategy is mostly focused on involving and mobilizing existing party members [28]. The technological development is perceived as a driving force behind the increasing involvement of political consultants and campaign professionals in campaigning. Indeed, it is argued that the parties do not have the capacity to deliver the advanced technical services that the contemporary campaign demands, and that much of the campaign work is better handled by political consultants [20]. In the candidate-centered US campaign the candidates are the main actors running for election, and they build their campaign organizations almost from scratch. Consequently, the campaign organizations are filled with independent political consultants specializing in campaign management, campaign organizing, opposition research, fund-raising and polling. In a party-centered campaign, the campaign professionals are more likely to be integrated in the party organization as full-time employees [29]. Farrell et al. argue that the technological development will increase the need for political consultants, in Europe as well [20]. Although ICTs surely create the need for a new type of expertise, there is no reason to expect that parties will not integrate this type of expertise in the party organization, and parties indeed seem to approach expertise concerning ICTs based on the existing practice: Expertise is integrated in the party organization while at the same time external professionals are used for technical assistance [29]. The third stage is moreover characterized by greater emphasis on direct modes of communication and the use of targeted campaign messages, or the fragmentation of political communication. The technological development is essential in this respect as well. The new ICTs provide incentives and enable parties to develop multi-tailored campaign messages aimed at different subgroups in society using the narrowest possible channel [6,19,26, pp. 110,215]. This narrow channel can, for example, be direct mail, targeted telemarketing, receiver-sensitive websites and specialized lists. Moreover the audience fragment due to increasing media diversity [44]. According to Howard receiver-sensitive websites have made it possible for political parties to show different content to different segments of their electorate on websites [26]. This tailoring is based on statistical models that suggest what the different users are likely to be interested in. This is possible due to database technology that provides the opportunity to collect and organize large quantities of voter information. In the US the two major parties operate databases containing data on 100 to 150 million voters [6,7]. As already suggested, this strategy also involves greater use of feedback to adapt the message to the needs, wants, expectations, beliefs, preferences, and interests of the different audiences [6, p. 215]. Context specific countervailing forces make narrowcasting strategies less likely in systems outside the US. For example, Norwegian parties 8 Quoted in [48, p. 108]. 9 Quoted in [48, p. 108].

10 224 R. Karlsen / Does new media technology drive election campaign change? hardly use the new technology to multi-tailor campaign messages to different voter categories. Database marketing is not utilized. This is most likely due to restrictions concerning collecting and processing personal data, but also due to the fact that voter targeting is not a traditional part of campaigning [27]. 6. Concluding remarks In many ways campaigning around the world is getting increasingly similar. The importance of the media and the professionalization of both campaign communication and the campaign organization are keywords. Moreover, new information and communication technologies are increasingly becoming an integral part of campaigning in most countries. However, in this article I have argued that new technology influence in interplay with the social context it is introduced into. The campaign environments consist of amongst other factors, political and media institutions, political actors with existing communication traditions, and ingrained media-habits in the electorate. Such characteristics will differ between countries, and I have argued that the technological influence on some of the essential features of the so called third age of political communication: new communication channels; the involvement of professionals; message targeting and fragmentation; fundraising; as well as campaign organizational matters, will to some extent depend on the features of the campaign environment. Of course, although the existing empirical evidence supports this view, more research is necessary to increase our knowledge of these matters. Nonetheless, simple models of Americanization or modernization processes converging on the US case conceal the way new technology shapes and are shaped in interplay with existing campaign practices and traditions maintaining distinct national patterns of campaigning. References [1] J.B. Abrahamsen, C. Arterton and G.R. Orren, The Electronic Commonwealth: The Impact of New Media Technologies on Democratic Politics, New York: Basic Books, [2] N. Anstead, The Internet and Campaign Finance in the U.S. and the UK: An Institutional Comparison, Journal of Information Technology and Politics 5 (2008), [3] N. Anstead and A. Chadwick, Parties, election campaigning and the Internet: Toward a comparative institutional approach, in: The handbook of Internet politics, A. Chadwick and P.N. Howard, eds, New York: Routledge, [4] S. Barnett, New Media, Old Problems, European Journal of Communication 12 (1997), [5] U. Beck, What is Globalization? Cambridge: Polity Press, [6] W.L. Bennett and J.B. Manheim, The One-Step Flow of Communication, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 608 (2006), [7] B. Bimber (2005) The Internet and Political Fragmentation. Paper presented at the Democracy in the 21 st Century Conference, University of Illinois. [8] B. Bimber and R. Davis, Campaigning Online. The Internet in US Elections, Oxford: Oxford University Press, [9] S. Blumenthal, The Permanent Campaign. Boston: Beacon, [10] J.G. Blumler and D. Kavanagh, The third age of political communication: Influences and features, Political Communication 16 (1999), [11] A. Briggs and P. Burke, A Social History of the Media, London: Polity Press, [12] I. Budge, The New Challenges of Direct Democracy, Cambridge: Polity Press, [13] T. Carlson and K. Strandberg, Plus ça change, plus ça reste le même? The Evolution of Finnish Web Campaigning , in: Communicating Politics. Political Communication in the Nordic Countries, J. Strömbäck, M. Ørsten and T. Aalberg, eds, Gothenburg: Nordicom, [14] S.H. Chaffee and M.J. Metzger, The End of Mass Communication? Mass Communication & Society 4 (2001), [15] D. Croteau and W. Hoynes, Media/Society. Industries, Images, and Audiences, Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press, [16] S. Douglas, Inventing American Broadcasting, , Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, [17] E. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

11 R. Karlsen / Does new media technology drive election campaign change? 225 [18] D. Farrell, Campaign Strategies and Tactics, in: Comparing Democracies. Elections and Voting in Global Perspective, L. LeDuc, R. G. Niemi and P. Norris, eds, London: Sage, [19] D. Farrell and P. Webb, Political Parties as Campaign Organizations, in: Parties without Partisans, R.J. Dalton and M. P. Wattenberg, eds, Oxford: Oxford University Press, [20] D. Farrell, R. Kolodny and S. Medvic, Parties and Campaign Professionals in a Digital Age. Political Consultants in the USA and Their Counterparts Overseas, Press/Politics 6 (2001), [21] M. Featherstone, S. Lash and R. Robertson, eds, Global Modernities, London: Sage, [22] K.A Foot and S.M. Schneider, Web Campaigning, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, [23] R. Gibson, Web-campaigning from a global perspective, Asia-Pacific Review 11 (2004), [24] R.L. Heilbroner, Do Machines Make History? Technology and Culture 8 (1967), [25] M. Hindman, The Real Lessons of Howard Dean: Reflections on the First Digital Campaign, Perspectives on Politics 3 (2005), [26] P. Howard, New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [27] R. Karlsen, Still Broadcasting the Campaign: On the Internet and the Fragmentation of Political Communication with Evidence from Norwegian Electoral Politics, Journal of Information Technology and Politics, forthcoming. [28] R. Karlsen, Adoption and Adaptation, The Influence of Obama s Online Campaign on European Political Parties: the Case of the Norwegian Labor. Paper presented at the Annual Norwegian Conference in Political Science, Kristiansand, January [29] R. Karlsen, Fear of the Political Consultant: Campaign Professionals and New Technology in Norwegian Electoral Politics, Party Politics 16 (2010), [30] M. Kranzberg, The Information Age: Evolution or Revolution? in: Information Technologies and Social Transformation, B.R. Guile, ed., Washington, DC: National Academy Press, [31] M. Kranzberg, The Scientific and Technical Age, Bulletin of Science and Technology Society 12 (1992), [32] M. Margolis and D. Resnick, Politics as Usual, Thousand Oaks: Sage, [33] M. McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, [34] M. McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, New York: New American Library, [35] W.R. Neuman, The Future of the Mass Audience, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [36] W.R. Neuman, The Impact of the New Media, in: Mediated Politics, W.L. Bennett and R.M. Entman, eds, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [37] P. Norris, A Virtuous Circle Political Communication in Postindustrial Societies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [38] J.N. Pieterse, Globalization as Hybridization, in: Global Modernities, M. Featherstone, S. Lash and R. Robertson, eds, London: Sage, [39] F. Plasser with G. Plasser, Global Political Campaigning, London: Praeger, [40] I. Pool, Forecasting the Telephone. A Retrospective Technology Assessment of the Telephone, Norwood: Ablex, [41] I. Pool, Technologies of Freedom, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, [42] I. Pool, Technologies Without Boundaries, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, [43] N. Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, London: Methuen, [44] M. Prior, Post-Broadcast Democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [45] H. Rheingold, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, Reading: Addison-Wesley, [46] R. Robertson, Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity, in: Global Modernities, M. Featherstone, S. Lash and R. Robertson, eds, London: Sage, [47] R. Schmitt-Beck, New Modes in Campaigning in: Handbook of Political Behavior, R. Dalton and H.D. Klingemann, eds, Oxford: Oxford University Press, [48] E. Thomas, A Long Time Coming, New York: Perseus Books, [49] T. Tomita, The New Electronic Media and Their Place in the Information Market of the Future, in: Newspapers and Democracy: International Essays on a Changing Medium, A. Smith, ed., Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, [50] S. Ward, R. Gibson and W. Lusoli, UK: Parties and the 2005 Virtual Campaign Not Quite Normal? in: Making a Difference? Internet Campaigning in a Comparative Perspective, S.J. Ward, D. Owen, R. Davis and D. Taras, eds, Lanham MD: Lexington Books, [51] S. Ward, D. Owen, R. Davis and D. Taras, eds, Making a Difference? Internet Campaigning in a Comparative Perspective, Lanham MD: Lexington Books, [52] B. Winston, Media Technology and Society. A History: From the Telegraph to the Internet, London: Routledge, 1998.

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