Data-Driven Campaigning and Political Parties : Five Advanced Democracies Compared

Challenging the often-hyperbolic claims that have been made around the use of data in election campaigns for voter manipulation and suppression, this book provides unrivalled evidence of how parties actually behave. It shows that data-driven campaigning practice is not inherently problematic or new, but neither is it uniform, rather systemic, regulatory and party level factors affecting the nature of campaigning. Providing detailed empirical examples from Australia, Canada, Germany, the UK and US, this book shows how parties campaign and explains why parties differ, thereby resetting prevailing understanding of the role of data in campaigns.

Katharine Dommett is Professor of Digital Politics at the University of Sheffield. Her research interests focus on digital campaigning, political parties, data use and public perceptions. Professor Dommett has published extensively on the use of data in elections, digital campaigning, and the implications of digital technology for democratic politics. In earlier work, she focused particularly on political parties, and her book, The Reimagined Party was published in 2020. Professor Dommett was awarded the 2020 Richard Rose Prize by the Political Studies Association for an early-career scholar who has made a distinctive contribution to British politics. This award recognized her work as Special Advisor to the House of Lords Committee on Democracy and Digital Technology and her extensive engagement in public policy debates.

Glenn Kefford's research explores questions about political parties, elections, campaigning, populism and the radical right. These interests span both Australian and comparative politics. He has published widely on these topics and his work has appeared in journals such as Political Studies, Party Politics, and the British Journal of Politics and International Relations. He is a former Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award Fellow (2019-2021) for his project on political campaigning in advanced democracies. Emerging from this fellowship was his previous monograph on data-driven campaigning, Political Parties and Campaigning in Australia: Data, Digital and Field, published by Palgrave. In the last five years, he has provided expert commentary in over 400 media stories about electoral politics in Australia and internationally. This includes writing for The Washington Post, The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, the Guardian and the ABC.

Dr Simon Kruschinski is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Communication at the Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz in Germany, where he received his PhD in Communication Studies in 2022. His research focuses on election campaigns and how data, analytics, and technologies are used to persuade or mobilise voters on- and offline. Depending on the object under study, he uses computational as well as traditional quantitative and qualitative methods. Dr Kruschinski has published extensively on topics at the intersection of political communication, digital marketing, political behaviour, and political media coverage. His publications appear in international peer-reviewed journals such as Political Communication, Journal of Information Technology & Politics, International Journal of Press/Politics, Party Politics, and European Union Politics. His work was funded by German funding bodies and has received national awards. He is involved in multinational research projects, such as CamforS (Campaigning for Strasbourg), or DigiWorld (Digital Election Campaigning Worldwide). Based on his expertise, Dr Kruschinski advises parties, institutions, or foundations and is regularly featured in German media. More details and updates about his research work can be found on his website, and on Twitter @meinungfuehrer.