Mapping the digitalisation of European political parties
Mapping the digitalisation of European political parties
An increasing number of comparative case studies explore the drivers and impacts of digital technologies on political parties (Bennet et al., 2018. The democratic interface: Technology, political organization, and diverging patterns of electoral representation. Information Communication & Society, 21(11), 1655–1680; Gerbaudo, 2019. The digital party: Political organisation and online democracy. Pluto Press), but a large
comparative account on how parties are changing due to digitalisation is still lacking. Based on the new Digitalisation in Parties (DIGIPART) Dataset developed by the authors, this paper addresses this gap by empirically assessing the use of digital platforms and their affordances in 62 parties in five European countries (France, Italy, Germany, United Kingdom and Spain). Building on previous research by Fitzpatrick (2021. The five-pillar model of parties’ migration into the digital. In O. Barberà, G. Sandri, P. Correa, & J. Rodríguez-Teruel (Eds.), Digital parties: The challenges of online organisation and participation (pp. 23–42). Springer Nature), the aim is to measure variations in the patterns of digitalisation of party activities, and to preliminary explore the relevance of some systemic and intra-organizational factors in shaping the use of party digital innovations (Lupato & Meloni, 2023. Digital intra-party democracy: An exploratory analysis of Podemos and the Labour Party. Parliamentary Affairs, 76(1), 22–42; Raniolo, Vittori and Tarditi 2021. Political parties and new digital technologies: Between tradition and innovation. In O. Barberà, G. Sandri, P. Correa, & J. Rodríguez-Teruel (Eds.), Digital parties: The challenges of online organisation and participation (pp. 181–204). Springer Nature). The preliminary results show that digital solutions are starting to be adopted as a facilitator of internal participation and that larger and older parties seem to be more digitalised than newer and smaller ones.
Europe, Political parties, digitalisation, participation, platforms
Sandri, Giulia
6f1cdd33-3715-497d-8c79-e536431e955a
Garcia Lupato, Fabio
63f5b382-ec89-4813-ba92-db695b27419e
Meloni, Marco
1c99ba03-fb1d-4e73-bab9-1ed7596f9795
von Nostitz, Felix
a6c88e70-eb85-4c5c-baad-6d0e51649b95
Barberà, Oscar
af67e582-01fa-4b97-8258-ce233c8538ee
30 April 2024
Sandri, Giulia
6f1cdd33-3715-497d-8c79-e536431e955a
Garcia Lupato, Fabio
63f5b382-ec89-4813-ba92-db695b27419e
Meloni, Marco
1c99ba03-fb1d-4e73-bab9-1ed7596f9795
von Nostitz, Felix
a6c88e70-eb85-4c5c-baad-6d0e51649b95
Barberà, Oscar
af67e582-01fa-4b97-8258-ce233c8538ee
Sandri, Giulia, Garcia Lupato, Fabio, Meloni, Marco, von Nostitz, Felix and Barberà, Oscar
(2024)
Mapping the digitalisation of European political parties.
Information, Communication and Society.
(doi:10.1080/1369118X.2024.2343369).
Abstract
An increasing number of comparative case studies explore the drivers and impacts of digital technologies on political parties (Bennet et al., 2018. The democratic interface: Technology, political organization, and diverging patterns of electoral representation. Information Communication & Society, 21(11), 1655–1680; Gerbaudo, 2019. The digital party: Political organisation and online democracy. Pluto Press), but a large
comparative account on how parties are changing due to digitalisation is still lacking. Based on the new Digitalisation in Parties (DIGIPART) Dataset developed by the authors, this paper addresses this gap by empirically assessing the use of digital platforms and their affordances in 62 parties in five European countries (France, Italy, Germany, United Kingdom and Spain). Building on previous research by Fitzpatrick (2021. The five-pillar model of parties’ migration into the digital. In O. Barberà, G. Sandri, P. Correa, & J. Rodríguez-Teruel (Eds.), Digital parties: The challenges of online organisation and participation (pp. 23–42). Springer Nature), the aim is to measure variations in the patterns of digitalisation of party activities, and to preliminary explore the relevance of some systemic and intra-organizational factors in shaping the use of party digital innovations (Lupato & Meloni, 2023. Digital intra-party democracy: An exploratory analysis of Podemos and the Labour Party. Parliamentary Affairs, 76(1), 22–42; Raniolo, Vittori and Tarditi 2021. Political parties and new digital technologies: Between tradition and innovation. In O. Barberà, G. Sandri, P. Correa, & J. Rodríguez-Teruel (Eds.), Digital parties: The challenges of online organisation and participation (pp. 181–204). Springer Nature). The preliminary results show that digital solutions are starting to be adopted as a facilitator of internal participation and that larger and older parties seem to be more digitalised than newer and smaller ones.
Text
Sandri_et_al.(2024)Mapping_party_digitalisation-complete
- Accepted Manuscript
Restricted to Repository staff only until 30 November 2025.
Request a copy
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 12 March 2024
e-pub ahead of print date: 30 April 2024
Published date: 30 April 2024
Additional Information:
Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Keywords:
Europe, Political parties, digitalisation, participation, platforms
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 490862
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/490862
ISSN: 1369-118X
PURE UUID: 7bc9162e-bcd1-42bd-a7ac-09078b19a752
Catalogue record
Date deposited: 07 Jun 2024 16:35
Last modified: 20 Jun 2024 02:02
Export record
Altmetrics
Contributors
Author:
Giulia Sandri
Author:
Fabio Garcia Lupato
Author:
Marco Meloni
Author:
Felix von Nostitz
Author:
Oscar Barberà
Download statistics
Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.
View more statistics