Research
Evolution, not revolution
I extracted 49,551 Facebook posts and hand-coded 1,481 across 882 codes. Parties mostly use Facebook to recreate the traditional campaign: a powerful broadcast tool bridging the digital and physical doorstep.
Janus-faced campaigning
Like the two-faced Roman god, a party can show different faces to different audiences. Party and leader pages run a traditional campaign; satellite pages run a radical one of humour, partisanship and participation. In 2017 this gave Labour the best of both worlds.
Satellite campaigning
Satellite groups such as Momentum let a party campaign adventurously without risking its main brand, and keep campaigning between elections.
Automated campaigning
Behind the curtain of the targeting machine, parties A/B test many versions of an advert and let the data pick the winners. In 2019, targeted ads were dominated by Brexit, the NHS and leadership.
Virtual membership
In 2019 party and leader pages had around 8.8 million followers, against roughly one million official party members.
Researcher data access
I have argued, including in evidence to Parliament, that researchers need access to platform data.
