Where you lead we will follow: a longitudinal study of strategic political communication in election campaigning

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1625
• Date: 01 August 2017
• Published date: 01 August 2017

ACADEMIC PAPER

Where you lead we will follow: a longitudinal study of strategic

political communication in election campaigning

Kajsa Falasca |Christina Grandien

Department of Media and Communication,

Mid Sweden University, Sundsvall, Sweden

Correspondence

Kajsa Falasca, Department of Media and

Communication, Mid Sweden University,

Sundsvall, Sweden.

E‐mail: kajsa.falasca@miun.se

Abstract

The ways in which election campaigns are planned, organized, and conducted have changed con-

siderably during recent decades, and political parties constantly employ new ideas and practices

in order to communicate as strategically and effectively as possible. The concept of strategic

political communication refers to an organization's purposeful management of information and

communication to achieve certain political goals. In this article, we focus on the role of the indi-

vidual political party in developing election campaigning. The empirical material covers the 2002,

2006, and 2010 Swedish national election campaigns and illustrates how political parties lead and

follow each other in the development of strategic political communication. By exploring party

agency, this article contributes to the understanding of how ideas and practices of strategic polit-

ical communication emerge and develop over time in election campaigning.

KEYWORDS

election campaigns, in‐depth interviews, political party strategists, qualitative method, strategic

political communication

1|INTRODUCTION

Over the years, the ways in which election campaigns are planned,

organized, and conducted have changed considerably, and political

parties employ new ideas and practices in order to communicate as

strategically and effectively as possible (Negrine, 2008; Plasser &

Plasser, 2008; Strömbäck, 2008; Tenscher, Mykkänen, & Moring,

2012; Vliegenthart, 2012). Political parties' increased use of strategic

political communication in election campaigning is often referred to

as an ongoing process of adaption to changing social, political, and

media environments (Esser & Strömbäck, 1997; Strömbäck & Kiousis,

2015). Research on election campaigning has, accordingly, predomi-

nantly focused on structural factors to explain how election campaigns

are conducted (Negrine, 2013; Strömbäck, 2008; Vliegenthart, 2012).

Considerably less attention has been directed at developments in the

use of strategic political communication in election campaigns, particu-

larly within countries and across time (Strömbäck & Kiousis, 2015). The

ways in which the political parties themselves influence the develop-

ment of new ideas and practices concerning the use of strategic polit-

ical communication, or indeed why some ideas and practices have a

greater impact on election campaigning than others, has received even

less attention. Put differently, we know little about how political

parties reflect on and strategically operate within the organizational

context in which they are embedded (Hallahan, Holtzhausen, Van

Ruler, Verčič, & Sriramesh, 2013; Lawrence, Leca, & Zilber, 2013).

In times of insecurity, organizations tend to, more or less con-

sciously, imitate other successful organizations by adopting functional

solutions and implementing popular or fashionable concepts, ideas, or

structures (Fredriksson & Pallas, 2012). This can be understood as a

form of social learning, involving the imitation or translation of suc-

cessful concepts, where organizations adapt, reshape, or add to the

concepts they find attractive (Czarniawska & Sevón, 1996a, 2005;

Fredriksson & Pallas, 2012). Against this background, the purpose of

this paper is to explore the process through which new ideas and prac-

tices concerning strategic political communication evolve and how

political parties influence these ideas and practices.

By doing this, the article contributes to our understanding of how

political parties influence the range of ideas and practices of strategic

political communication. In order to understand how concepts, ideas,

and practices are picked up, adopted, and incorporated into practices

of strategic political communication, it is important to analyze the

whole process and not only the adoption. Furthermore, this article

contributes to an understanding of why some ideas and practices have

greater impact on election campaigning than others. Finally, this article

contributes with insights on the dynamics of translation and imitation

of fashionable ideas and practices of strategic political communication.

Received: 27 May 2016 Accepted: 11 August 2016

DOI: 10.1002/pa.1625

J Public Affairs. 2017;17:e1625. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1of10

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1625