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Crafting campaigns, messages, and identities: Belgian parties in a digitalized political arena

par Kins, Lucas
Président du jury Van Haute, Emilie
Promoteur Close, Caroline
Publication Non publié, 2025-04-24

Thèse de doctorat

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Résumé :

Digital media have reshaped the way in which party organizations communicate with the public. At the same time, their use in the context of partisan communication still reflects established patterns of interparty competition. This dissertation examines two distinct but related aspects of political parties’ uptake of digital media for communication purposes. First, building on the literature on party digitalization and digital campaigning, it seeks to determine the extent to which political parties, as strategic but constrained actors, embrace or reject digital media for partisan communication, and how this is shaped by intra-organizational dynamics. Second, it investigates the content of their digital communication, by examining patterns of strategic political messaging across the political spectrum, and how these are shaped by parties’ inherited attributes, but also by the broader institutional framework in which they operate. Through an in-depth case study of Belgium, this dissertation leverages the country’s consociational setting, party system fragmentation, and linguistic duality to dissect the interplay between parties’ strategic digital media use and the constraints on their communication strategies. The first empirical study draws from qualitative interviews with political staff, and the second from a large-scale analysis of social media posts issued by parties and their leaders during and outside of a campaign period. In doing so, it unravels how organizational- and system-level characteristics shape parties’ diverse approaches to digital communication, but also their messaging strategies regarding negative campaigning, issue ownership and group cues. Overall, findings indicate that Belgian political parties’ adoption and use of digital media reflect the country’s unique institutional context. Beyond enriching our understanding of Belgian politics from a communicational perspective, this dissertation offers insights into how, when, and why parties leverage digital media to navigate interparty competition.