The paper begins by stating that social media like Facebook and twitter place the focus on the individual politician rather than the political party. This makes it possible for the political arena to expand more for increased personalized campaigns. It states that when a country is mostly party centered, such as Norway, the idea of personalized campaigns seems less obvious. In candidate centered political systems such as the USA, personalization is the goal of campaigning. Skogerbø states that social media has, over the past few years, become integrated into election campaigning and other forms of political communication. The hypothesis used in this paper is as follows: Social media, as a result of their design, affordances, their interplay with other media and the opportunities for creating intimate relations to voters, add to processes of personalization. The paper investigates to what extend Norwegian politicians use social media to communicate politics. The article continues by stating that social media fits into long term ongoing processes where political communication becomes increasingly focused on personalities and personal lives of politicians. According to the writers this is due to mediatization of politics. The researchers found there are 3 main reasons for using social media in election campaigns, namely: Marketing to increase the visibility of candidacies and parties; Mobilization to translate online engagement into real action and Dialogue with its voters. The researchers have come to the following conclusions: Politicians report higher motivations for democratic dialogue on social media than what the actually do; Social media marketing was personalized and involved private exposure and individual initiatives and lastly, social media marketing was mainly about mobilizing for the election and less about branding (Enli & Skogerbø, 2013)
The situation in the Netherlands
The Netherlands, like Norway has party centered politics. Still, in some cases politicians are better known than their party. The Netherlands has a lot of prominent politicians who are very active on social media such as twitter. Take for example Thierry Baudet, a Dutch politicians who uses his social media platform to spread hate towards immigrants, women and liberal political views such as abortion and euthanasia. Thierry Baudet recently tweeted the following tweet:
“Tonight two dear friends were seriously harassed by four Moroccans on a train. Of course, going to the police is completely pointless. Oh dear, childishly naive Dutch! Finally vote for change. Break free from politically correct bullshit! Save this country!” – (Baudet, 2020).
Perhaps a better-known example is Geert Wilders, who often gets compared to Donald Trump. Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders has spent more than a decade encouraging popular resentment against Muslims, the E.U. and immigrants and most of this is done through his social media accounts (John, 2017).
Both Thierry Baudet and Geert Wilders are populists who actively use their social media to spread their personalized campaigns. These two politicians are perhaps better known than their own political party, people tend to vote for them as a personal and their personal views instead of their political party. However, a vote for them means a vote for their party. So these personalized campaigns are in fact beneficial for the political party they represent.
I have found that Dutch politicians mostly use microtargeting through their social media channels, be it for their own gain or their party’s gain. Examples of this throughout the elections are: A video by Klaas Dijkhof about the VVD (People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy) refugee crisis is shown in the timeline of Facebook users who have friends who like VVD’s Facebook page. Or a video about green energy is sent to the timeline of people interested in the topic of “environmental protection”. A video by GroenLinks with a video of a debate in which Jesse Klaver advocates that 50 percent female ministers are sent to women between 18 and 55 years old and women who have Facebook friends who, for example, like the GroenLinks page. Microtargeting can therefore be used to send specific messages to specific and potentially doubting voters (Kruikemeier, 2017).
News articles or research papers about personalized campaigns in party centered politics in the Netherlands are scarce, a perhaps somewhat outdated research paper by the Radbound University in Nijmegen has the following opinions on the topic. The research stated that social media was widespread among Dutch politicians in 2012: three-quarters of the candidates in the 2012 elections had a Twitter account and nearly 90 percent of the candidates were active on at least one of three social media (Facebook, Twitter, Hyves). The results of this research also indicate that all parties understand the importance of social media at this stage of the diffusion process. The research suggests that social media is used more by party leaders (100%) than by the average candidate (76%) or the average top 10 candidate (77%). According to the researchers this shows signs of presidentialization or (very) focused individualization that mainly normalizes the balance of power within parties. This research also states that Twitter in particular is very personal and offers challenges rather than opportunities for parties. On Twitter, parties disappear even more in the background (Jacobs & Spierings, 2015).
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