Digital electoral campaigns: actors, practices and regulation

Abstract

The expansion of the use of digital technology in electoral campaigns has triggered the emergence of specialized actors (Howard, 2006; Gibson, 2020), as well as a fundamental transformations in campaigning instruments and strategies, from micro-targeting to social media canvassing to big data. These new practices are increasingly supported, but also constrained, by digital platforms. Activism and political engagement are evolving by adapting to this digitalization process, which also has consequences for the internal structures of political organizations (Gerbaudo, 2019). In addition, the regulation of digital electoral campaigns is becoming a major issue (Montigny et al., 2019). Whereas the campaigning possibilities offered by big data seem infinite (Kreiss, 2016; Baldwin-Philippi, 2020), how can we ensure that the various actors involved (platforms, candidates, parties, etc.) respect not only the privacy of citizens but also the basic rules of a democratic campaign (Rubinstein, 2014)? Furthermore, how can we ensure that digital voting procedures, whose use is growing rapidly around the world, abide to the same technical and security standards than traditional, analogic voting procedures (Gritzalis, 2012)? The objective of this axis is to bring together scholarly works that consider digital campaigns either from the point of view of individual actors and their behaviors, from the point of view of organizations, or from the point of view of platforms and their regulation. Contributions articulating all or several of these dimensions of analysis will be particularly welcome.

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