TY - JOUR A1 - Gibson, Rachel A1 - Bon, Esmeralda A1 - Darius, Philipp A1 - Smyth, Peter T1 - Are Online Political Influencers Accelerating Democratic Deconsolidation? JF - Media and Communication N2 - Social media campaigning is increasingly linked with anti-democratic outcomes, with concerns to date centring on paid adverts, rather than organic content produced by a new set of online political influencers. This study systematically compares voter exposure to these new campaign actors with candidate-sponsored ads, as well as established and alternative news sources during the US 2020 presidential election. Specifically, we examine how far higher exposure to these sources is linked with key trends identified in the democratic deconsolidation thesis. We use data from a national YouGov survey designed to measure digital campaign exposure to test our hypotheses. Findings show that while higher exposure to online political influencers is linked to more extremist opinions, followers are not disengaging from conventional politics. Exposure to paid political ads, however, is confirmed as a potential source of growing distrust in political institutions. Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v11i3.6813 SN - 2183-2439 VL - 11 IS - 3 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bon, Esmeralda A1 - Gibson, Rachel A1 - Darius, Philipp A1 - Greffet, Fabienne A1 - Römmele, Andrea T1 - What drives data‐driven campaigning (DDC)? A comparative analysis of the institutional and organisational factors shaping the adoption of DDC in the French and German party systems JF - Swiss Political Science Review N2 - This paper analyses the adoption of data‐driven campaigning (DDC) by German and French parties in recent national elections using data from an original post‐election survey of 27 parties (12 German, 15 French) and a new purpose‐built DDC campaign index. Specifically, we investigate two main research questions: (1) Do countries and parties vary in the extent to which DDC is practised? (2) If so, what explains those differences? We find that while in both countries DDC adoption is limited in comparison to other campaign modes, differences exist across countries and parties based on a range of macro (systemic) and meso (organisation‐level) factors. Most notably, contrary to normalisation theory, we find that minor parties with a ‘netroots’ base and newcomers who are digital ‘natives’ engage more in DDC than the ‘legacy’ major parties. Y1 - 2025 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/spsr.12652 SN - 1424-7755 VL - 31 SP - 79 EP - 101 PB - Wiley ER -