The Online Connection: Explaining Party Members’ Attitudes towards Digitalization

The digitalization of political parties has been investigated extensively from the perspective of how parties use it, type of political communication, obstacles and favorable contexts, or its consequences. However, we know very little about what party members believe about it. As primary users of digitalization and active components of party organizations, understanding their opinions can inform about internal challenges and opportunities for digitalization, or about members’ future actions (e.g. embracing or rejecting digitalization). This paper seeks to address this gap in the literature and aims to explain what drives the different perceptions about the importance of digitalization within political parties. We use individual-level data from an original survey to be conducted with members of the major political parties in Romania in January and February 2023. Our statistical analysis tests for the influence of active engagement, position in the party, use of technology, opinions about party priorities, and perceptions of inclusiveness or centralization. We control for the length of membership, age, education and gender.