a campaign perspective on the motivation for adopting...
TRANSCRIPT
A Campaign Perspective on the Motivation for Adopting Social Media in US Congressional Campaigns
by
Girish J. “Jeff” Gulati
and
Christine B. Williams
Bentley University
175 Forest Street
Waltham, MA 02452
United States
Prepared for delivery at the 22nd World Congress of Political Science,
Madrid, Spain, July 8 – July 12, 2012
Copyright by the International Political Science Association
A Campaign Perspective on the Motivation for Adopting Social Media in
US Congressional Campaigns
Abstract
This study investigates the reasons why candidates adopted Facebook and Twitter in
the 2010 elections to the U.S. Congress. The study is one of the first to analyze over 60
interviews with candidates and campaign staff members to provide a richer explanation
for the motivating factors in campaign adoption decisions. This relatively large sample of
House races affords the opportunity to investigate differences between Democratic and
Republican candidates as well as between incumbents and those who are challengers
or contesting open seats. In addition, the sample of interviewees is sufficiently
representative that we have confidence our findings generalize to the larger population.
Our analysis shows that campaigns are motivated somewhat more by a desire to
communicate than to mobilize through social media. Many campaigns are not targeting
particular groups in adopting social media, but when they do, their focus is on young
voters. Finally, campaigns generally espouse a cautious if not negative view of the
importance of social media use in campaigns.
Keywords: social media, campaign organizations, Congressional elections, diffusion of
innovation
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A Campaign Perspective on the Motivation for Adopting Social Media in
US Congressional Campaigns
The 2008 elections marked another major milestone for the Internet and political
campaigns in the United States. For the first time, over half of the voting-age public
(55%) used the Internet to connect in some form to the political process in an election
year. In 2010, the 54% of adults who used the Internet in this way far surpassed the
31% who did so in the 2006 midterm contest (Smith, 2011). In all categories of online
political activity, the last two election cycles saw record numbers of Americans going
online for political news, to view official campaign videos, and to use Facebook and
other online social networking sites to engage in the campaign (Smith, 2009; Smith,
2011).
Also in 2008, candidates for Congress made significant strides integrating Web sites
and social media into their larger communication strategy and were poised to build on
these gains and seek new tools in the next election cycle. In 2010, 92% of the major
party candidates had created a campaign Web site, and 92% had a presence on
Facebook. In addition, 71% of candidates had a presence on Twitter, the newest
addition in social media campaign tools.
This embrace of social media by a large majority of candidates running for Congress
is changing the way that campaigns are managed, how money is raised, resources are
allocated, and the means candidates use to communicate with the electorate and with
their supporters and staff. Ultimately, social media have the potential to alter not only
the dynamics of campaigns but also the nature of democratic elections. Thus,
candidates who have yet to embrace these tools risk putting themselves at a
competitive disadvantage in their pursuit of Congressional office. This behavior has
significant implications for representative democracy if non-adopters tend to be
concentrated among distinct categories of candidates, particularly as adopters begin
taking advantage of the opportunities afforded by these new technologies.
While there is an extensive body of research that has examined adoption patterns
for various Internet applications, there also are significant weaknesses and limitations in
the findings and interpretations of this literature. First, many of these studies are only
weakly grounded in theory and often draw their hypotheses simply from logically
reasoned assumptions and the findings from past research. In contrast, our study uses
diffusion of innovation theory to ground its explanations of why campaigns adopt new
technology and specifically social media. Second, most of the existing research relies
exclusively on quantitative data analysis. Foot and Schneider (2006) and Howard
(2006) are among the few exceptions. In this paper we examine over 60 interviews with
candidates and staff from the 2010 campaigns to provide a richer explanation for the
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motivation behind candidates’ decisions to adopt social media. Our present study
focuses on the technology adoption stage; other work has considered the later stages of
usage and performance (Williams and Gulati, 2009). We concern ourselves here with
three categories of factors related to adoption decisions: motivation (i.e., the reasons
and goals that underlie why campaigns choose to adopt or not), strategy (i.e., the
factors campaigns consider in calculating the costs and benefits of adoption) and target
group (i.e., which segments of the electorate they want to reach through social media).
Most of our interviews are specific to Facebook or Twitter, but almost all offer insights
and information on adoption and use of social media in general.
Diffusion of Innovation Theory and the Election Context
The diffusion of innovation literature offers insights into questions about who decides
to use a new technology, to what extent, and with what impact on performance,
productivity, or the organization itself. The characteristics of early adopters and also the
timing and extent of the adoptions have been studied for both individuals and
organizations (Fichman, 1992; Frambach and Schillewaert, 2002).1 In most
formulations, adoption decisions depend not only on the characteristics of the adopter,
but also on characteristics of the innovation or technology (e.g., ease of use, cost, etc.)
and of the environment.
For example, Kwon and Zmud (1987) identify five categories of these contextual
factors: characteristics of the adopting organization, the user community, the innovation
or technology, the task and the environment. Meyer and Goes (1988) argue that an
organization’s innovativeness is influenced by contextual attributes (environmental and
organizational variables), innovation attributes (level of risk and skill required) and their
interaction. Two empirical studies will serve to illustrate the range of indicators that have
been used to predict adoption decisions at the organizational and individual levels of
analysis. Goode and Stevens (2000) considered six characteristics to explain which
organizations adopted or failed to adopt WWW technology: the size and age of the
business, its IT support and budget, technology experience (all characteristics of the
adopting organization), and its industry (user community and environment). Hong and
Tam (2006) considered five sets of factors influencing individual decisions to adopt
mobile data services technologies: general (usefulness and ease of use) and specific
(service availability and monetary value) technology attributes, psychographics
(enjoyment and need for uniqueness), social influence/approval and demographics
(gender, age). The latter two factors reflect a mix of user community, task and
environmental attributes.
1 A parallel, earlier literature exists in political science. See for example Hage and Aiken, 1967; Mohr, 1969; Walker, 1969; Gray, 1973.
3
A political campaign is an organization where the candidate is both the adoption
decision-maker and the ‘product’ being promoted to the electorate. Thus in the context
of a political campaign, adopter characteristics should be studied at both the
organizational and individual level, together with attributes of the environment that
reference collective aggregates: constituency demographics and electoral
circumstances. Such mixed metrics are typical of political science studies of the
diffusion of campaign Web sites, which have examined relatively few categories and a
somewhat limited number of contextual factors. Most draw upon the same finite set,
which is divided into constituency factors (the user community) and political system
factors (the environment). Constituencies are described demographically by median
income, and percent urban, white, college educated, young, and sometimes rate of
Internet penetration (Foot and Schneider, 2006). The political environment is described
by characteristics of the electoral contest and candidate or public official: level of office,
competitiveness of the race, party identification (of the constituency or candidate), party
status (major or minor party), status of the seat (incumbent, challenger, open seat), and
amount of campaign funds raised. The most common individual adopter characteristics
have been the candidate’s age and gender (Gulati and Williams, 2011).
Prior Research on Campaign Website Adoption
The diffusion of innovation literature suggests that the reason constituency factors
should lead candidates to adopt new technologies is that organizations are mindful of
the degree to which an innovation is compatible and incompatible with expectations
(existing norms and values), as well as the needs and capacities of its users or
customers (Tornatzky and Klein, 1982). The constituency attributes that have been
selected to explain campaign Web site adoption are those that have been shown to
correlate with citizen access to and use of the Internet: education, income, ethnicity,
age, and urbanization (Chadwick, 2006; Klotz, 2004; Mossberger et al., 2003). Higher
levels of education make people more comfortable with and skilled in the use of
technology, while higher levels of income make computers easier to afford. Although
whites use the Internet at higher rates than do African Americans, racial and ethnic
differences have diminished over time and seem to be a reflection of disparities in
education and income (Marriott, 2006). The age gap persists, however: Internet use
declines with each advancing age group. Urban areas have greater Internet use than
rural areas, but the difference has declined substantially. These constituency
demographics in turn influence candidates’ Internet use (Hernnson et al., 2007).
Other studies have examined the precursors to adoption within the political
environment. Adler, et al. (1998) found that Republicans, younger legislators and
representatives from electorally marginal districts were more likely to become early
adopters by creating homepages on the World Wide Web when they first became
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available to members of the U.S. House of Representatives between June and August
1997. Research on campaign websites offers another profile of early adopters. In the
early days, incumbents were less likely than challengers to campaign on the Web, but a
competitive race increased its use by incumbents and challengers alike (Kamarck,
2002; Xenos and Foot, 2005; Foot and Schneider, 2006; Hernnson et al., 2007).
Financially disadvantaged candidates were less likely to have a campaign Web site in
the early days of Internet campaigning (Gibson et al. 2003), although this has proved
less of a barrier subsequently. Financial resources and major party status still
differentiate which campaigns incorporate the latest technology and features, however
(Foot and Schneider 2006). Electoral attributes are less important today in
differentiating which campaigns have a Web site, but remain important determinants of
the degree to which they provide more sophisticated content and use their Web site to
engage and mobilize supporters (Gulati and Williams, 2007).
Compared to traditional media and the early campaign technology of campaign Web
sites, social media have several obvious advantages (Gulati and Williams, 2010). Social
media are:
timely: the site can be updated immediately;
easy to use: updating is simply a matter of uploading and posting content;
cost effective: campaigns do not have to purchase as much bandwidth for their Web sites if they just post a tab directly linking to social media from their Web site; and
reach a large and growing audience.
Much of our past work has been dedicated to analyzing and explaining why some
House candidates have been more likely than others to adopt a campaign Web site
(Gulati and Williams, 2007), Facebook (Williams and Gulati, 2009), YouTube (Gulati
and Williams, 2010), and Twitter (Williams and Gulati, 2010). In our most recent study
(Gulati and Williams, 2011), we analyzed data collected from the campaigns of the 836
major party candidates running for the House of Representatives in 2010. We estimated
logistic regression models of the adoption of a Facebook fan page and a Twitter profile.
For each model, we included indicators to account for constituency-demand: (1) the
percentage of residents classified as white (2) median household income, (3) the
percentage of residents over age 64, (4) the percentage of residents over 24 with a
college degree, and (5) the percentage of residents living in rural areas. We also
controlled for party, incumbency status, competitiveness of the race, and peer adoption
(i.e. adoption by other candidates in the same state). Organizational attributes included
the campaign’s financial resources and organizational propensity to adopt new
technologies. Finally, we included two salient personal attributes: the candidate’s
age/birth year and gender.
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We found that among the major party candidates for the House of Representatives,
82% had a Facebook page and 74% adopted a Twitter account for the 2010 election.
There was no statistically significant relationship between constituency demographics
and the likelihood of adopting either medium. Party, the competitiveness of race, and
the candidate’s age and gender also did not matter. Rather, strategic and
organizational factors were the key drivers that differentiated adopters from non-
adopters:
Incumbents were significantly more likely to have adopted Facebook , but
incumbents were significantly less likely than both challengers and open seat
candidates to be early adopters of Twitter.
The candidates who raised the most money were the most likely to have adopted
Facebook and Twitter.
Higher rates of adoption by one’s peer group also increased the likelihood of
adoption.
The campaign’s familiarity with technology and earlier generations of online
media increased the likelihood of adoption. Candidates who also had a campaign
Web site were more likely to have adopted Facebook than those candidates
without a Web site. In addition, candidates who had a Web site and a Facebook
profile were more likely to have adopted Twitter.
While these results indicate which types of candidates adopt social media and which
types do not, these and other results from statistical models are unable to tell us the
reasons why candidates adopt and the motivations underlying their decisions.
The Data: Candidate Interviews
The goal of this study is to obtain a deeper understanding of how congressional
candidates use Facebook and Twitter, and to uncover the underlying motives and
strategic goals for adopting social media. We conducted interviews with representatives
from 62 different campaigns who had first-hand knowledge of the campaign’s Internet
strategy and operations between October 15 and December 13, 2010. Using a semi-
structured interview protocol developed by the authors, the interviews were conducted
by 19 student assistants who were enrolled in a class on campaigns & elections. All
assistants asked the campaign representatives to provide the reasons why their
candidates were using social media in general and which specific applications and
features they were using, and describe how they were integrating the social media into
their larger strategy. Candidates who had not adopted one or both media also were
interviewed and asked to discuss the reasons why they had not done so.
Although our objective for conducting these interviews was to understand why (and
how) some campaigns chose to use (or not use) Facebook and Twitter, rather than
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make generalizations, we did strive to obtain as representative a sample as possible.
Each assistant was randomly assigned approximately 23 races, which yielded list of
approximately 38 candidates to interview. Contact information was obtained from the
candidates’ web sites. In some cases, the person in charge of social media activities or
maintaining the site was identified by browsing the candidate’s Facebook page. At least
one attempt was made at contacting each candidate’s campaign either by e-mail or
phone, but nearly all of the interviews were conducted over the phone. In 10 cases, the
candidates themselves responded to the interviews. At the end of the field period, we
obtained interviews from 62 campaigns. In our sample, 61% were Republicans, 40%
were incumbents, 44% were challengers, and 16% were candidates running in open
seats. In addition, 29% of the interviews were from campaigns involved in competitive
races. The average age of the candidate was 53.6 (median = 53), 91% were white, and
82% were men. We acknowledge that the sample is somewhat biased towards
Republicans, which we assume is the result of the greater accessibility of challengers
and more challengers being Republicans in 2010. Another 26 interviews were
conducted but are not being used for this study either because they were of Senate
candidates, the responses dealt only with YouTube, or were unusable for this study for
a variety of reasons.
Interview Analysis
Motivation
There are 46 campaigns out of the 62, or three quarters of our sample whose interviews
describe their specific motivation for adopting Facebook or Twitter. We subdivided the
motivation category into five sub-topics: Communication, Mobilization/Engagement,
Fundraising, Research/Polling, and Non-adoption. Communication was the most
frequently cited motive (25 references) followed by Mobilization/Engagement (19
references), and 2 Non-adoption references. Fundraising was either an afterthought,
the last in a list (3 mentions such as “…and to raise funds”), or it was specifically
excluded as a motivation (3 mentions, such as “…never thought of it as a way to get
donations”). Only one campaign interview included a secondary, research motivation
(“it gave our office the option to see how voters felt about issues and to see the level of
support we had”). Table 1 illustrates the types of comments indicative of Motivation and
how these distributed themselves by sub-topic.
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Table 1 Sample Interview Comments Referencing Motivation
MOTIVATION (46 campaigns)
sub-topic: Communication (25 campaigns) e.g., It was primarily used for the dissemination of information. People can use the page to see how __________ voted on specific issues. If they want to know how he voted on the smoking ban, then they can easily check out the Facebook page to find that information. Facebook is a great way of keeping the public informed on __________’s work in office
sub-topic: Mobilization/engagement (19 campaigns) e.g., Basically to connect people to our campaign and possibly engage them. To increase rally turnout.
sub-topic: Non-adoption (2 campaigns) e.g., didn’t want to waste time on something that wouldn’t return any concrete results. e.g., no need for social media, felt it didn’t hurt them.
The 25 references to the sub-topic Communication divided evenly between the two
parties: 12 came from Democratic candidates’ campaigns and 13 came from
Republican campaigns. However, since the 46 Motivation comments as a whole
represent 28 (61%) Republicans and 18 (39%) Democrats, Republican campaigns are
underrepresented and Democratic campaigns are overrepresented in the group
focusing on Communication. The reverse obtains when we split the references to the
sub-topic Mobilization/Engagement between parties. Here 14 (74%) of the comments
came from Republican candidates’ campaigns and only 5 (26%) of them from
Democrats. These results suggest that in the 2010 elections, Republicans were more
actively seeking to energize supporters. That would be consistent with anecdotal
descriptions of the parties’ behavior and respective competitive positions in the midterm
election (Drake, 2010; Lightman, 2010).2
2 http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/10/31/energized-voters-and-backing-of-independents-putting-gop-out-in/; http://www.cleveland.com/nation/index.ssf/2010/07/republicans_more_energized_abo.html.
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With respect to incumbency status, 11 of the Communication references came from
incumbents, whereas 14 of them came from challengers (8) or those contesting open
seats (6). The distribution across all 46 Motivation comments is 39% incumbents and
61% challengers (41%) plus open seats (20%). This means that incumbents have a
somewhat higher propensity to reference Communication than their proportion in the
larger sample (44% vs. 39%). Mobilization/ Engagement produces the opposite split:
only 6 incumbents referenced mobilization or engagement in contrast to the 10
challengers plus 3 open seat candidates who referenced it (68.5% vs. 61%). This
finding is consistent with early studies of campaign website adoption which found that
incumbents were slower to adopt new technologies (e.g., Kamarck, 2002). There
seems to be less incentive for incumbents to go beyond the basic practice of informing
(Foot and Schneider, 2006) when they do adopt social media.
The adopting candidate’s own age is often a significant predictor of adoption,
particularly for Twitter (Williams and Gulati, 2010; Straus, et al., 2010; Lassen and
Brown, 2010). Analysis of all of the Motivation sub-topics shows no significant
differences between those older and younger than the sample median of 53 years
(range is 30 to 79). We therefore do not report the age split for our interview data.
Although younger candidates may embrace social media in higher proportion and
sooner than their older peers, their motivation, strategic calculus and target groups do
not seem to be influenced by personal characteristics such as age. Candidates did,
however, explicitly mention age-related anxieties or problems with respect to the use of
social media. For example, one campaign manager for a 69 year old commented that
“most candidates do not use social media in their personal lives because they are often
less tech savvy than younger generations.” In contrast, another explained that “As a
relatively young candidate I can see the importance of a site such as Facebook, and I
wanted to incorporate my understanding of the website to further promote my
campaign.”
Target Group
There are 34 campaigns out of the 62 campaigns we interviewed, or nearly half of our
sample that reference a group that they targeted through social media or indicated that
they were not targeting a specific group or anyone in particular. We subdivided the
Target Group category into four sub-topics: Youth, Not Youth or No Target, Partisans,
and Other. Not surprisingly, the largest number of campaigns directed their comments
to the youth demographic: 18 said that they were targeting younger voters, and 11 said
either that they were not targeting youth, were targeting everyone, or described their
constituency as older. Only two identified party supporters or activists as their intended
target group, and one identified a different criterion for targeting—their local district. A
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few mentioned Others (young professionals, urban voters) as a secondary target, but
our analysis focuses only on the primary group. Table 2 illustrates the types of
comments indicative of Target Group and how these distributed themselves by sub-
topic.
Table 2 Sample Interview Comments Referencing Target Group
TARGET GROUP (34 campaigns)
sub-topic: youth (18 campaigns) e.g., Our main target was the younger generation, anyone 35 or younger. Facebook is inherently popular among that age group.
sub-topic: not youth/no target (13 campaigns) e.g., The biggest demographic of our voter base was women over 55. We didn’t target people under 18 because they weren’t able to vote. Most of our fans fell into the traditional democratic voter base.
sub-topic: partisans (2 campaigns) e.g., Mainly geared towards people who were activists or supporters. e.g., Mostly for people who were already supporters- encourage them to get their friends involved. Hispanics untapped potential.
sub-topic: other (1 campaign)
e.g., The largest target demographic would be people who live in the district.
Our sample of 34 Target Group references includes 12 (35%) Democrats and 22
(65%) Republicans. For the sub-topic Youth, 7 of the 18 (39%) come from Democrats
and the other 11 (61%) come from Republicans. That is very close to the sample
distribution with Democrats being slightly more youth oriented in their targeting. A much
clearer difference emerges in the party split on the sub-topic Not Youth/No Target.
Here only 3 of the 13 (23%) are from Democratic campaigns while 10 (77%) are from
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Republicans. In other words, Republicans are either not targeting youth or are targeting
everyone. This difference appears consistent with the age differential in partisan
supporters generally and in 2010 specifically where voters under 30 were the only age
group to support Democrats (Connelly and Marsh, 2010).3
None of the sub-topic splits based on incumbency status reveal any differences in
campaigns’ targeting behaviors. Whereas parties concern themselves with mobilizing
their base, and the supporters who comprise their base are differentiated
demographically, there is no inherent reason why groups should differentiate
themselves based on incumbency status. Since there were no candidate age
differences in motivation, strategic calculus or target group, the fact that incumbents
tend to be older has no confounding effect here. We were unable to test whether the
competitiveness of the race affected targeting behavior, motivation or strategic calculus
because so few Congressional contests are competitive. This would require a larger
sample or over sampling for those in our interview selection process.
Strategy
There are 36 campaigns out of the 62, or just over half of our sample whose
interviews comment on whether social media are necessary or important to winning,
and the strategic purposes for which they were being employed. We subdivided the
Strategy category into three sub-topics: Necessary/Important, Specific Strategy, and
Opponent’s Actions. Necessary/Important was the most frequently cited strategic
comment (18 campaigns) followed by Opponent’s Actions (12 campaign references),
and 6 Specific Strategy references. The sub-topics were further divided to differentiate
between positive and negative strategic assessments. Table 3 illustrates the types of
comments that evidence a strategic calculus and how these distributed themselves by
sub-topic.
Of the 18 comments about the role of social media, 12 of the campaigns said it was
not necessary or important and only 6 of them said they felt it was. Thus by a 2 to 1
margin, campaigns are negative or at least cautious in their strategic evaluations of
social media. Turning to the comments about the influence of their opponent, 7 of the 12
campaigns represented in this sub-topic did not care whether their opponent had
adopted social media or indicated that the opponent’s actions did not influence their
3 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/weekinreview/07marsh.html
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decision to adopt; 5 said the opposite. Interestingly most knew whether or not and what
their opponent was doing with social media: “In the primary our competitor didn’t use
Facebook at all; the competitor’s page was an absolute failure. They would post
challenges for us, but it didn’t behoove us to engage in these challenges.”
Table 3 Sample Interview Comments Referencing Strategy
STRATEGY (36 campaigns)
sub-topic: necessary, negative (12 campaigns) e.g., Representative xxxx did not think that it would have a significant impact on the outcome of the election.
sub-topic: necessary, positive (6 campaigns)
e.g.,We think that it is one of many great resources that are needed in order to win a political campaign.
sub-topic: opponent, negative (7 campaigns)
e.g., The campaign manager felt that the social media wasn’t utilized by the opponent and didn’t feel that it was something they needed to do. More of an on-foot campaign situation.
sub-topic: opponent, positive (5 campaigns) e.g., Our challenger didn’t have one so it became clear that this was one area where we could excel in our campaign strategy.
sub-topic: specific strategic goal (6 campaigns) e.g., We knew that defeating an incumbent is difficult in any election so we knew that even though the political climate was favored towards the Republicans, we had to utilize as many tools as possible.
Once the positive and negative references within the Necessary and Opponent’s
Actions sub-topics are separated, too few remain to confidently assess the difference
between Democratic and Republican campaigns and between incumbent and non-
incumbent candidates. The cases we do have show that Republicans were somewhat
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less interested in their opponent’s actions and less convinced of the importance of
social media than Democrats. Non-incumbents were slightly more influenced by their
opponent’s social media actions, but less convinced of the technology’s importance
than incumbents. In both cases it may be that those in an advantageous electoral
position (Republicans in 2010 and incumbents generally) can afford to ignore the
opposition. In assessing importance, challengers in Congressional races may feel, and
realistically so, that other factors such as financing weigh much more critically on their
chances than their social media presence. A much larger sample of interviews is
needed to ascertain whether these findings are borne out.
Although not numerous (6 campaigns), there were a variety of Specific Strategy
comments. These ranged from citing social media’s strategic value to first-time
candidates, for offsetting incumbents’ advantages, fewer resources, or a climate that
favored the opposite (Republican) party. Another viewed social media in a particular
capacity, namely as an extension of the campaign’s advertising strategy. The fact that
very few campaigns identified any specific strategic assessment of social media
indicates this is still a new technology with which campaigns are still experimenting.
Even though 92% of Congressional campaigns had a presence on Facebook in 2010
and 71% had Twitter accounts, we are not yet seeing standardization in how campaigns
view their role, nor evidence that social media have been integrated into a larger
campaign strategy or with other, traditional marketing tools.
Summary and Conclusions
Much of the previous research on the adoption of Internet applications by congressional
candidates has relied exclusively on quantitative data analysis. Our own most recent
quantitative study showed that almost all the candidates have a Facebook page and
about three-fourths of the candidates adopted Twitter. Incumbents were significantly
more likely to have adopted Facebook, but incumbents were significantly less likely than
both challengers and open seat candidates to be early adopters of Twitter. The
candidates who raised the most money were the most likely to have adopted Facebook
and Twitter. Higher rates of adoption by one’s peer group and the campaign’s familiarity
with technology also increased the likelihood of adoption. Our model from this previous
study was unable to show the reasons for why incumbents were more likely to adopt
Facebook, or why non-incumbents were more likely to adopt Twitter, or what is it about
incumbency that influences the adoption decision (Gulati and Williams, 2011). Diffusion
of innovation theory, a growing body of statistical models, and our practical knowledge
of campaigns has given us firm theoretical foundation from which to draw conclusions
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and interpretations, but it is not a substitute for asking and observing the people who
are involved in making the decisions to adopt.
In this paper, we set out to understand the factors related to the decisions of
Congressional candidates to adopt social media, specifically Facebook and Twitter. In
this paper, we focused on the reasons and goals that underlie why campaigns choose
to adopt or not some form of social media (i.e., motivation), the factors campaigns
considered in calculating the costs and benefits of adoption (i.e., strategy), and the
segments of the electorate that they wanted to reach through social media (i.e., target
group). We conducted interviews with 62 campaigns, asking them about why the
campaign choose to adopt Facebook and Twitter, what specifically they hoped to
accomplish, how was it being integrated into their larger communication and
mobilization strategies, and whom they were specifically trying to target.
Our interviews uncovered a number of interesting insights not previously gleaned
from the estimates generated from statistical models. We found that the main reason
that campaigns adopted social media was to be able to communicate their message to
the voting public. Another reason that seemed to motive the campaigns was to be able
to engage and mobilize their supporters. Incumbents, who have more to say, were more
likely to be motivated by communication, while non-incumbents were more motivated by
engagement. Fundraising was not a motivation to adopt. What is important to note
about these three findings is that there is no particular type of candidate who adopts
and, thus, using conventional candidate demographics and constituency characteristics
in statistical model will not be able to identify the motivations underlying the decision to
adopt social media and how the campaigns are using it.
Larger strategic goals did not seem to be a major motivator of adoption. Most of the
campaigns said that they did not see Facebook or Twitter as necessary or important for
winning, and some were either unfavorable or skeptical towards social media’s strategic
value. These findings are consistent with the findings from our statistical analyses from
the past two election cycles that showed that the competitiveness of the race was
unrelated to the decision to adopt (Gulati and Williams, 2011; Williams and Gulati,
2009). But now we have more of an understanding for why that is the case. Speculation
had been that the reason competitiveness was unrelated to adoption was that social
media was becoming a standard campaign tool. While that may be the case, the
campaigns do not see it as necessary for winning.
It is assumed that since Facebook began as a medium restricted to college students
and that younger people are the most eager and capable of embracing new technology,
that campaigns would use social media to communicate to young voters in particular
and use it to engage and mobilize them as well. While our statistical models did not
show that the median age or percentage of elderly people in the district mattered (Gulati
and Williams, 2011), it is clear that a majority of campaigns that target a specific
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constituency do indeed use social media to try to reach young people. But this approach
is in no way influenced by the proportion of elderly or younger voters in the district.
While there have been other studies that have taken a qualitative approach (e.g.,
see Foot and Schneider, 2006), it has been rare for researchers to combine a large-N
quantitative study with numerous in-depth interviews. Our previous study (Gulati and
Williams, 2011) combined with these 62 interviews with candidates and staff from the
campaigns provide a richer explanation for the motivation behind candidates’ decisions
to adopt social media and sets the stage for our study of the 2012 campaigns. Our goal
is to conduct twice as many interviews as we did in 2010, have a more representative
sample of candidates, and a more structured interview protocol for our student
assistants. We also want to learn more about the people who comprise the campaign’s
social-media team, how content is generated, the process by which content is placed
and managed on the social media sites, and more about how it is being integrated in the
larger campaign strategy. We urge others to follow this approach as well in order to
learn more about how and why candidates adopt social media.
15
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