Communication in Election Campaigns: Staggering Changes or Same Old, Same Old?

Election campaign communication is a core area of political communication research. Although it is increasingly common to hear that the differences between election campaign periods and campaign-free periods are fading and that we are living in times of “permanent campaigning,” election campaigns remain key phases of political communication (Sarcinelli, 2011). In times when democracies are under attack, elections and election campaigns are all the more important, and result in groundbreaking decisions for the democratic constitution of states. After a super-election year in 2024—with elections for the European Parliament, presidential elections in the USA, national elections in Austria, state elections in Germany, etc.—our thematic issue invites studies focusing on the topic of election campaign communication. The aim is to discuss which content is communicated with which strategies and in which channels, which actors play an important role, and what effects election campaign communication achieves. While we will consider manuscripts on various aspects pertaining to communication in election campaigns, the following topics are of particular interest:

• Potential changes prompted by digitalization;
• The increasing tendency toward entertainment;
• The growing importance of visual communication;
• The rise of “non-political” actors such as influencers on Instagram and TikTok;
• The strategic use of (relatively) new platforms to reach young voters.

In light of these trends, questions arise about the continuity of scientific findings on election campaign communication: Are research findings generated in the 1990s and 2000s still applicable today? To what extent do our research approaches and methods need to be adapted to take account of changed conditions of election campaign communication in the digital era?

References

Sarcinelli, U. (2011). Wahlkampfkommunikation: Modernisierung von Wahlkämpfen und Modernisierung von Demokratie. In U. Sarcinelli (Ed.), Politische Kommunikation in Deutschland (pp. 225–246). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-93018-3_12