Intra-Party Communication in the Digital Era - An Empirical Case Study of Party Delegates from the German Greens

ABSTRACT

Digital media plays a vital role for political parties’ communication. Research so far has focused mainly on the use of social media for election campaigns, while little is known about party officials’ use of social media for intra-party communication. Besides elections, key events for political parties are conferences, in which delegates play a central role in transmitting the party branches’ perspectives to the party and vice versa. Therefore, this paper addresses a) the role played by social media regarding the communication of party delegates with their party branch, and b) the factors determining delegates’ social media usage. To answer these questions, we drew on survey data collected during the 2018 party conference of the German Green Party. Based on multivariate analysis, our results indicate that party delegates’ social media usage is rather low and driven by (younger) age and normative and strategic considerations.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mario Datts

Mario Datts obtained his Doctorate at the University of Düsseldorf with his doctoral thesis on the usage of social media by political parties. He previously worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hildesheim. Since 2022, he has been employed as a research consultant at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR).

Katharina Gerl

Katharina Gerl is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Social Science at Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf and at the Düsseldorf Institute for Internet and Democracy. Her research focuses on the implications of digital technologies for political institutions, political communication and participation.