Digital campaigning outside and during electionsUses of social network sites and emerging practices: the case of the Members of the European Parliament

This paper proposes to focus not only on digital campaigning but also on the impact that digital campaigning has on political actors within organizations. My research looks at the use of social network sites (SNS) by prospective parliamentary candidates in the context of the 2014 European elections, both in the UK and in France. The objective is to assess whether SNSs allow candidates to initiate a changing form of communicational patterns both towards their audiences and within their political organization as well as their institutions. The paper will contextualize digital campaigning by comparing “everyday uses” and “electoral” use of SNSs in order to identify specificities and similarities of digital campaigning both outside and during election times. How Members of the European Parliament use SNSs and how SNSs participate in emerging practices have been the focus of my research since 2009. Drawing on my research, I can ascertain that digital campaigning takes place on a daily and systematic basis and changes the role and place of Members of Parliament – as regards to their party and their audiences. The research will focus on actors, interactions, interpretations and representations. In such an approach, practices are seen as an individual and collective process of appropriation and transformation. The methodology therefore articulates participant observation, interviews and questionnaires