People as Media: Campaigns and Actually Existing Democracy

By Daniel Kreiss

In Ground Wars, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen makes an important contribution in revealing and analyzing an important trend in political campaigning that has taken shape over the last two decades: the increasing investment in face-to-face political communication through field efforts.  Nielsen describes how over-saturation in advertising markets, media fragmentation, and signature social science field experiments have lead to candidates at all levels of office engaging in “ground wars” fought by volunteers and paid canvassers going door-to-door to identify the partisan affiliations of and deliver messages to voters—all in the hope of bringing sympathizers to the polls on election day.  In light of these findings, Nielsen shows how much political communication scholars have overlooked in focusing so much attention on television advertising and press coverage. 

Organizing as a Campaign Strategy

By Marshall Ganz

Rasmus Klies Nielsen’s Ground Wars brings refreshing focus to the role interpersonal communication can play in even the most high-tech, high dollar, high-profile 2012 electoral campaign. This is an important reality check for those who think it’s all simply a matter of who can buy the best ads.

There is, however, another aspect to this question that I’d like to highlight: the difference in whether one employs interpersonal communication as yet another marketing technique or whether it is used to engage people in organizing to become active participants in the political process.  This distinction is of particular significance for Democrats who cannot rely on the network of gun clubs, evangelical churches, right to life groups, and tea party chapters that so successfully provided the grassroots base for an ascendant conservative movement over the course of the last 30 years. 

Is GOTV a universally applicable answer for campaigns to the challenge of fragmented audiences?

By Andreas Jungherr

In his recent book Ground Wars Rasmus Kleis Nielsen^[i] offers an insightful look inside the workings of the Get-Out-the-Vote (GOTV) effort of Democratic candidates for US-congress during the campaign in 2008.  This detailed account of the goals, methods and actual practices of GOTV efforts is in and of itself interesting but it also offers insights to a much deeper and more decisive question present day campaigners face. Namely, how do campaigns and candidates effectively reach their potential voters in an age of abundant media choices, fragmented audiences and information saturation?  Personalized GOTV efforts, as described by Nielsen in his book, might offer a temporary answer. But an answer, as he will probably be the first to state, whose actual effectiveness over time, varying campaign contexts, and different countries has yet to be proven.

Data Wizardry, An Ocean of Cash, and “Mundane” Revolutions: The 2012 Election and the Internet

By David Karpf

2012 is the year when the Internet moves firmly into the background for political campaigns.

In the 2000 election, the web was a novelty.  Candidate McCain attracted headlines through his post-New Hampshire online fundraising, but otherwise the medium was mostly used for reinforcement, not persuasion.

In the 2004 election, Howard Dean demonstrated the power of the new medium for partisan mobilization.  Dean supporters used the web to donate, to volunteer online, and to MeetUp offline.  Heavy media attention followed, even if primary victories did not.