The platformisation of party politics?
Political parties have gone digital. Political scientists in countries around the world have diagnosed the rise of the digital party and traced parties’ adoption of digital technology. Existing attempts to understand parties’ digital practices have focused on the adoption of different tools, with sc...
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| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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HOPE
2024-10-01
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| Series: | Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journalqd.org/article/view/5172 |
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| _version_ | 1849239330952839168 |
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| author | Kate Dommett Fenwick McKelvey Glenn Kefford |
| author_facet | Kate Dommett Fenwick McKelvey Glenn Kefford |
| author_sort | Kate Dommett |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Political parties have gone digital. Political scientists in countries around the world have diagnosed the rise of the digital party and traced parties’ adoption of digital technology. Existing attempts to understand parties’ digital practices have focused on the adoption of different tools, with scholars empirically studying and theorizing how and why digital technology is used. What has received less attention is the technical architecture and origins of these tools, questions that have been more directly examined by political communication scholarship. In this paper we entwine insights from these two disciplines, interrogating the idea of ‘platformization’ in the context of political technology. Presenting a unique, longitudinal dataset that captures the technological development of political party websites in 66 parties in 16 countries, we provide unprecedented insight into the evolution of party websites and show evidence of increasing platform dependency. Our findings have important implications for our understanding of parties’ relationship with technology, showing how technological developments and monopolies can lead to increasingly homogenized practice internationally.
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| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-c77c87dc6a7f4658a47fc1eec280bae0 |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 2673-8813 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2024-10-01 |
| publisher | HOPE |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media |
| spelling | doaj-art-c77c87dc6a7f4658a47fc1eec280bae02025-08-20T04:01:02ZengHOPEJournal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media2673-88132024-10-01410.51685/jqd.2024.018The platformisation of party politics?Kate Dommett0Fenwick McKelvey1Glenn Kefford2University of SheffieldConcordia UniversityQueensland University of TechnologyPolitical parties have gone digital. Political scientists in countries around the world have diagnosed the rise of the digital party and traced parties’ adoption of digital technology. Existing attempts to understand parties’ digital practices have focused on the adoption of different tools, with scholars empirically studying and theorizing how and why digital technology is used. What has received less attention is the technical architecture and origins of these tools, questions that have been more directly examined by political communication scholarship. In this paper we entwine insights from these two disciplines, interrogating the idea of ‘platformization’ in the context of political technology. Presenting a unique, longitudinal dataset that captures the technological development of political party websites in 66 parties in 16 countries, we provide unprecedented insight into the evolution of party websites and show evidence of increasing platform dependency. Our findings have important implications for our understanding of parties’ relationship with technology, showing how technological developments and monopolies can lead to increasingly homogenized practice internationally. https://journalqd.org/article/view/5172political partiesplatformsdigital campaignswebsites |
| spellingShingle | Kate Dommett Fenwick McKelvey Glenn Kefford The platformisation of party politics? Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media political parties platforms digital campaigns websites |
| title | The platformisation of party politics? |
| title_full | The platformisation of party politics? |
| title_fullStr | The platformisation of party politics? |
| title_full_unstemmed | The platformisation of party politics? |
| title_short | The platformisation of party politics? |
| title_sort | platformisation of party politics |
| topic | political parties platforms digital campaigns websites |
| url | https://journalqd.org/article/view/5172 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT katedommett theplatformisationofpartypolitics AT fenwickmckelvey theplatformisationofpartypolitics AT glennkefford theplatformisationofpartypolitics AT katedommett platformisationofpartypolitics AT fenwickmckelvey platformisationofpartypolitics AT glennkefford platformisationofpartypolitics |