Please join us for the next in our ESRC sponsored Chalk + Talk series with Professor Rachel Gibson, University of Manchester.
Date and time:
Thursday 12 March 2015, 12:30 – 13:30
A light lunch will be served from 12:00
Location:
Social Market Foundation
11 Tufton Street, London, SW1P 3QB
Despite the increased investment and growing popularity of digital tools in election campaigns, most notably in the US, there is as yet no clear evidence of how far they are actually being used by political parties and candidates worldwide, and crucially whether or not they work in terms of mobilising voters and generating electoral support.
Professor Rachel Gibson will review findings on whether online campaigning methods work and how their effectiveness compares with more traditional GOTV (get out the vote) efforts. She will then present fresh international evidence on the rates of online political engagement in old and newer democracies, and on who the recipients of this new type of digital persuasion are. Finally, Professor Gibson will examine evidence from a recent study of the UK 2010 General Election and the US 2012 Presidential election in which the impact of online tools on voter turnout are estimated and compared to the importance of offline techniques.
Chalk + Talk is the SMF’s popular lunchtime seminar series, run in partnership with the ESRC.