Personalization in e-campaigning: A cross-national comparison of personalization strategies used on candidate websites of 17 countries in EP elections 2009

Abstract

Candidate websites provide politicians with opportunities to present themselves in an individual way. To a greater or lesser extent politicians share personal information in their biographies and provide options to connect with citizens by putting links on their websites to their social networking sites (SNS). In this paper, although acting on different levels, both strategies are indicated as forms of personalization strategies used by politicians in their online communication. This cross-national study explores the use of these strategies on candidate websites in 17 countries during the elections for the European Parliament (EP) in June 2009. This is a comparative study of the personalized and individualized campaigning styles used during elections. Findings show that three general dimensions of personalization can be distinguished; ‘professional’, ‘home and family’ and ‘personal preferences’. While the first two dimensions show a higher level of use among candidates, the third dimension on private information is hardly used. Results show also that countries from Central Europe inform their citizens more about their professional and personal circumstances, and Mediterranean countries use personalization strategies the least. Furthermore, the overall findings show that SNS were not frequently used during the 2009 e-campaigning. West European countries use links to SNS more frequently than countries in other regions. In general these findings suggest cross-cultural differences regarding online personalized political campaigning.

Keywords

Cross-national comparative research e-campaigning European elections personalization of politics

Introduction

Political developments (e.g. declining party membership, an increase in floating voters) provoke parties and politicians to search for other strategies, such as personalization, to win votes. Even though there is quite a long tradition of debates on the developments and effects of the personalization of politics, political communication scholars acknowledge that there is still an important deficiency in knowledge when it comes to empirical research in relation to the behavior of politicians in election campaigns (e.g. Adam and Maier, 2010: 232; Rahat and Shaefer, 2007; Van Santen and Van Zoonen, 2009.

Most studies focus on the development of personalization in relation to media coverage (e.g. Kriesi, 2011; Langer, 2010; McAllister, 2007; Poguntke and Webb, 2005) and describe how politicians are represented in the media. These studies fit into broader discussions about the way the media change politics. Scholars refer to this process as the mediatization of politics (Campus, 2010; Driessens et al., 2010). Until now little attention has been given to the personalization strategy implemented by the behavior of politician. The way politicians represent themselves in their controlled media messages circumvent the interference of journalists and news coverage. It is a good example of how politicians themselves use a more personalized, individualized campaign style.

Attention to a politician as a person seems to suit the upcoming use of new media in political communication. One of the new options emerging in political campaigning concerns the opportunity the Internet provides for politicians to have their own website. These personal websites with a personalized URL can be defined as a piece of digitalized information that is published by an individual candidate which provides personalized information (Zittel, 2004: 239). It is a digital brochure, aiming not only to inform citizens on their political viewpoints but also on their professional résumé, personal interests, likes and dislikes. Furthermore we look into how politicians use their ability to provide citizens with links to their personal SNS. The use of these SNS give candidates stronger options for connecting with their constituents.

This study provides systematic analyses of the way politicians use specific aspects of the personalization strategies on their websites to inform and connect with their potential voters. This will be studied at a cross-national level, by analyzing candidates’ websites in the EP election campaign of 2009. As such, this addresses the lack of knowledge in the research field of the personalization of politics. We aim to fill some gaps in the knowledge of the personalization strategies used by politicians in online campaigning from a cross-national perspective (Adam and Maier, 2010; Rahat and Shaefer, 2007).

Towards e-campaigning in election campaigns

In many Western countries politics suffers increasingly from declining interest and participation of citizens in the political arena. The decreasing importance of party loyalty is leading to declining party membership and an unpredictable electorate. Politicians are confronted with citizens’ growing distrust of politics. Although this trend is visible in national elections, it is even more true for issues concerning the European Union (Flickinger and Studlar, 2007). Citizens in member states are only slightly interested in European politics, as shown by the low voter turnout at the last EP elections in 2009 with a mean of 43 percent. This was the lowest turnout in history (European Parliament, 2009).

To halt or even reverse this trend, political parties need to professionalize their communication activities and develop new campaign tools and communication strategies to reach the voter. Political parties utilize professional marketing campaign strategies where voters are increasingly viewed as consumers rather than loyal party members (Gibson and Römmele, 2001; Karlsen, 2009). To increase their efforts to reach the voters, political parties use new media such as digital communication technologies (e.g. websites, email and online social media) (Gibson and Römmele, 2009).

Research shows that in the last decade the use of political websites to present information by political parties and politicians has become acceptable (Foot and Schneider, 2006; Gulati and Williams, 2007; Norris, 2003). Recently there has been a considerable growth of websites dedicated to individual political actors. Through these sites politicians and candidates can create a public image of themselves, as well as convey their political ideas. Politicians can communicate directly with citizens without direct interference from the mass media (Zittel, 2004). The individualized online campaign can be seen as a strategy to seek votes based on personality. Developing and maintaining several Web platforms easily allows politicians to add all sorts of personal information. In doing so, the psychological distance between politicians and citizens is said to decrease, resulting in more favorable attitudes towards the politician (Utz, 2009).

Studies on e-campaigning

Despite the fact that the use of the Internet by political parties and candidates is widespread, most studies on so-called e-campaigning originate from the Anglo-Saxon countries, particularly the United States. This is due to the innovations and new campaign techniques often developed during US elections, which can be characterized as an individualized and candidate-centered political system (Esser and Pfetsch, 2004; Gibson, 2004). Based on the increased adoption of these new campaign strategies, one can conclude that this development is part of a global shift toward a growing professionalization and modernization of election campaigns (Gibson, 2004; Gibson and Römmele, 2001; Norris, 2000; Zittel, 2009).

Research into e-campaigning in the US found that both political parties and candidates have increased their Web presence over recent years (Gulati and Williams, 2007; Norris, 2003). Nearly all websites include information about the producer, e.g. the politician, such as candidate biographies, campaign contact addresses and speeches. These websites often collect information from visitors to the site and also provide the opportunity for visitors to contribute in some way to the campaign (as volunteers, through donations, etc.). Findings show that the dominant function is still to disseminate information; it appears that online content often replicates offline content (see, e.g., Schweitzer, 2008).

Kluver et al. (2007) conclude that, although e-campaigning has been used for more than a decade, until a few years ago most online campaigns were mainly Web 1.0 campaigns, in which communication was predominantly hierarchical and one-sided, from the politician and party directly to the citizens (Gulati and Williams, 2007). These results are confirmed in the international context: despite the different political systems, political election websites worldwide seem to be dominated by informative features (Kluver et al., 2007). Features that use applications based on two-way communication and interactive formats, with the possibility of getting people actively involved and defined by concepts such as ‘political engagement’ or ’mobilization’, are far less common (Jankowski et al., 2005; Schweitzer, 2008).

These findings are disappointing for scholars who expected that the opportunities offered by the Internet would increase communication between politicians and citizens and therefore reduce the democratic deficit. Recently hopes have been raised again, due to new applications that focus on personal and interactive communication (cf. Jackson and Lilleker, 2009a). These applications, referred to as Web 2.0, can be described as Web features that allow people to interact on the websites (Lilleker et al., 2010; O’Reilly, 2005). Some keywords that are associated with Web 2.0 are ‘bottom-up’, ‘sharing’, ‘collaborating’ and ‘social’. Web 2.0 applications contain blogs, SNS such as MySpace, Facebook and Hyves, and file-sharing sites such as Flickr and YouTube. With the introduction of Web 2.0, many parties, politicians and candidates have adopted blogging, SNS and sharing sites (De Zuniga et al., 2009). The use of these applications allows politicians to individualize and personalize their campaigning style. In doing so, politicians try to decrease the psychological distance between themselves and voters (Vergeer et al., 2011). Because of the increased options for interactivity, Web 2.0 applications might have a greater impact on representation and participation than did Web 1.0. These new applications could encourage citizens to get politically involved on an individual and personal level (Jackson and Lilleker, 2009b; Lilleker et al., 2010; Vergeer et al., 2011).

Personalization in politics

The personalization of politics is often discussed (e.g. Adam and Maier, 2010; Rahat and Shaefer, 2007). The ‘claim is that personalization is changing the focus of politics from topics to people and from parties to politicians’ (Adam and Maier, 2010: 213). Studies on personalization in a broader perspective can be divided into three areas − media coverage, politicians’ behavior (in election campaigns) and voters’ behavior. The empirical output for the use of the personalization of politics seems to be most equivocal in the studies of media coverage, and despite some contrary results most studies seem to show a movement toward more attention to politicians as individuals (Adam and Maier, 2010; Kriesi, 2011; McAllister, 2007; Strömbäck and Kaïd, 2008). In general terms it can be concluded that the issue of the personalization of politics is a complex phenomenon involving many facets. It is beyond the scope of this study to discuss this field in all its complexity. We will, however, focus on the personalization strategies indicated by the behavior of politicians. Studies of the personalization strategies used by politicians and candidates in their own controlled communications are rare (Adam and Maier, 2010; Rahat and Shaefer, 2007). In Kaid and Holz-Bacha (2006) a collection of studies on television advertisements from across the world show that the assumed dominance of the image of politicians at the expense of issues cannot be substantiated. Scholars found differences between countries and conclude that the ’traditional westernized democracies emphasize issues more than the evolving countries’ (Kaid and Holz-Bacha, 2006: 449). This was also confirmed by research, studying the ratio between image and issue in television advertisements during national elections across time (Holz-Bacha, 2002; Johnstone and Kaid, 2002). These studies point out that personalization is not a new phenomenon, but has already been applied in political advertising for a long time.

Today’s election campaigns show more signs of the increased use of personalized campaigns on the Web. In the new century several scholars (Hooghe and Vissers, 2009; Schneider and Foot, 2004; Van Aelst, 2002; Van Os et al., 2007) expected that individual campaigning on personal websites would develop further and would play an important role in future election campaigns.

If we look at personal information distributed through individual websites then there is hardly any earlier empirical research, certainly not cross-national comparative research.

This study explores the specific uses of personalization strategies on candidate sites: first the way candidates provide the audience with information in their biography, and, second, how candidates connect with their audience by linking to their SNS so that interaction becomes possible.

Research questions

Despite the assumption that politics has become more personalized, there are only a few studies on this thesis that provide systematic analysis. The few studies that have been conducted indicate that there are different types of behavioral personalization that can be described as more candidate-centered (the politician as a professional) or more personality-centered (the politician as an individual) (Johnstone and Kaid, 2002; Rahat and Shaefer, 2007). Because there is not much known about the kind of personal information that politicians provide on their websites, the first step is to look at the structure of the information on the EP candidates’ sites. The information in the biographies is used to explore different dimensions of the personalization strategies. This leads to the following question:

1. What elements of personalization exist in politicians’ online biographies in the 2009 elections campaign for the European Parliament and how do these comprise general dimensions of personalization?

Scholars indicate that there should be a greater focus on comparative studies, ‘particularly to explore systemic dynamics which shape the uptake of technology in the political sphere … and electoral and campaign rules’ (Gibson and Ward, 2009: 96; e.g. Adam and Maier, 2010; Mansell, 2010). Until now there have been no comparative empirical studies that have systematically analyzed personalization strategies on candidate websites (Adam and Maier, 2010; Karvonen, 2010).

To study the use of personalization strategies in e-campaigning across nations the EP elections provide us with applicative data. Data are comparable because elections for the EP were held in the same period in all participating countries, namely in the first week of June 2009. We collected data in 17 of the 25 countries of the European Union. We used the biography of the candidate websites because the information given was factual and therefore comparable without any interference of cultural meaning. A sample of candidate websites was used to analyze how the politicians present themselves as individuals on their websites. The second question is:

2. To what extent are the distinguishing dimensions of personalization used in the biographies on the websites of political candidates of the 17 European countries participating in the European Parliament elections in 2009?

As mentioned before, the use of SNS is increasingly popular among politicians to interact on a personal level with potential voters. Links to the personal SNS of the candidates can be seen as a form of personalization because this indicates that politicians want to make it easy for visitors to go directly to the personal SNS of the candidate. It is beyond the scope of this comparative study to analyze the actual use of SNS (e.g. the number of postings, the number of friends). The extent to which candidates in the 17 European countries link and therefore use these SNS is interpreted as the extent to which candidates want a straightforward communication with citizens. The third research question is:

3. To what extent do the politicians of the 17 European countries participating in the European Parliament elections in 2009 link to their social network sites?

According to Adam and Maier (2010) the overall degree of personalization depends on institutional factors (Kriesi, 2011). They refer to institutional macro variables to explain differences between countries. Despite the fact that the conditions for personalization seem more suited to presidential systems, they may also be present in ‘semi presidential systems or parliamentary systems, which by their nature are more strongly focused on parties’ (Adam and Maier, 2010: 217). Consequently it can be expected that majority systems show a stronger tendency to personalization than consensus democracies, because the majority democracy can be characterized by a strong leader with a great deal of power and a system in which the winner takes all. In addition, in consensus democracies, which most of the European countries are, they also expect differentiation because the mode of election can differ (e.g., Adam and Maier, 2010: 235).

Prior research on this area is not known, so we conducted an exploratory cross-national study to compare the use of personalization strategies between countries. Whether differences occur and can be interpreted in terms of structural differences has yet to be determined. This leads to the following research questions:

4. Can the differences between countries found in the candidates’ use of personalization strategies be interpreted by the macro institutional characteristics of the countries?

Data

Sample

This study was part of a cross-national research project, Comparative European New Media and Elections Project (CENMEP) (see Vergeer et al., 2012). Data were collected during the EP elections in June 2009 in the 17 countries participating (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Number of candidate sites per country.

	N	%
Austria	15	2.0
Belgium	51	6.9
Cyprus	29	3.9
Czech Republic	37	5.0
Estonia	55	7.5
France	35	4.7
Germany	32	4.3
Greece	55	7.5
Hungary	39	5.3
Ireland	43	5.8
The Netherlands	89	12.1
Poland	29	3.9
Portugal	38	5.1
Romania	15	2.0
Slovakia	38	5.1
Sweden	65	8.8
United Kingdom	73	9.9
Total	738	100.0

In this study a sample of all candidates with a web presence is used. The focus is not only on political leaders, as in many former studies (e.g. Kaase, 1994; McAllister, 2007). First, for each country the top three candidates for each party were selected. For countries with a large number of candidate websites a systematic random sample was drawn from the other candidates. This procedure resulted in 738 candidate sites from 17 countries. As such, the sample is slightly biased towards the higher-ranked candidates.

The websites of the candidates were coded using a standardized measurement. National experts from the countries involved were trained collectively during a two-day session. To assess inter-coder reliability coders were instructed to code websites that were subsequently compared to expert coding by the principal research team. An agreement of 80 percent and higher was considered to be sufficiently reliable (range: 82.7 per cent - 91.0 per cent). For the analyses of this study only a selected section of variables, those pertaining to personalization, of the total measurement instrument was used.

Measurements: Informing and connecting

Informing

To measure how candidates use personalization strategies, the information provided by candidates in their biography was used (Appendix 1). Biographies were coded using an instrument of 15 indicators.

To measure to what extent the politicians offer features to connect with visitors the number of links to SNS (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, LinkedIn) were counted. This is an approximation of the actual utilization of the SNS. This straightforward measurement meets the requirements of comparative studies because the functional construct is not sensitive to distortions and measurements artifacts (Pfetsch and Esser, 2004). Mean scores were calculated and used for further analyses. To clarify differences in the use of forms of personalization strategies between countries national institutional variables were used as context variables (cf. Wirth and Kolb, 2004)

Macro institutional variables

Because of the lack of previous studies, an exploration was used to understand how differences found between countries could be interpreted (Adam and Maier, 2010). Dimensions of personalization were related to the different background characteristics of the countries. We included several factors on a macro institutional level such as political system (Hallin and Mancini, 2004) and political trust (European Commission, 2010). Because this study concerns the European elections we have also included variables on a European level, such as geographical region and years of EU membership,

Political system

Hallin and Mancini’s (2004) classification of political systems in Europe was used. Not all countries included in our study was categorized by Hallin and Mancini, so an additional category was used − post-communist systems (Table 2).

Table 2.

Country classification based on Hallin and Mancini (2004).

Democratic corporatist:	Austria, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden
Liberal model:	Ireland, United Kingdom
Polarized pluralistic:	Greece, France, Portugal
Post-communist	Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Estonia
Not available:	Cyprus

To measure political trust in general we used data from Eurobarometer 71 (European Commission, 2010). The average of three measures (trust in government, trust in parliament and trust political parties) was taken to indicate political trust in general. Countries were classified as being low or high on political trust based on the overall median score.

European region can be of importance because clusters of countries can indicate differences in cultures. Countries were classified according the scheme presented in Table 3.

Table 3.

Countries classified by European region.

Western Europe:	Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, United Kingdom
Nordic Europe:	Estonia, Sweden
Southern Europe:	Cyprus, Greece, Portugal
Central Europe:	Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovenia

Years of EU membership were measured by subtracting the year the country first participated in EP elections (European Union, 2010) from 2009.

Results

In response to RQ1, findings show that the concept personalization is not one-dimensional, but that there are several dimensions of personalization: (1) ‘professional’ (Cronbach’s α = .722), (2) ‘home and family’ (Cronbach’s α = .819) (3) ‘personal preferences’ (Cronbach’s α = .608) (Table 4).

Table 4.

Dimensional structure in personalization strategy on candidate websites in the 2009 EP elections.

	Professional	Personal preferences	Home and family	Communalities
Description of political career	.838			.445
Official positions of politicians	.577			.249
Political achievements	.569			.267
Education	.470			.333
Favourite writer		.751		.438
Favourite TV program		.665		.380
Favourite music		.664		.380
Favourite website		.460		.283
Favourite sports		.264		.114
Marital status			−.967	.523
Children			−.711	.497
Eigenvalues	3.035	2.058	1.188
Explained variance	27.588	18.707	10.798

Note: N = 738, factor loading > .25 not reported, oblique rotation.

Four items were excluded from the factor analyses due to low factor loadings and/or communalities: place of birth, place of residence, religious conviction, sexuality.

The dimension ‘professional’ refers to the candidate’s career as an indication of his/her performance and competence. The dimension ‘home and family’ refers to personal facts and is an indicator for individual circumstances in private life. As for the dimension of ‘individual preferences’, this concerns the candidate’s personal interests and informs people about the candidate’s personal preferences belonging to his private sphere.

The three dimensions of personalization referring to informing are related to each other marginal (see Appendix 2). The dimensions ‘professional’ and ‘home and family’ show a moderate correlation (r = .471): candidates that provide more information about their professional background also give more information about their home and family.

The dimensions of personalization for information are not used to the same extent (see Table 5). Candidates predominantly disclose professional information, referring to their professional identity as a favorite way of showing political competence. It is the most important image politicians want to convey to the public. Factual information about ‘home and family’ is also used regularly, apparently indicating that having a solid home base is important. Candidates do not offer much information about their personal preferences, which can be interpreted as candidates not wanting to share this kind of private information on their websites. Politicians are reluctant to show their individual identity by sharing their personal preferences. They do not provide the audience with information that would otherwise not be public.

Table 5.

Mean score (normalized) on dimensions of personalization.

	Mean	SD
Professional	.53	.360
Personal preferences	.05	.013
Home and family	.34	.044

N = 738.

Comparing the ways personalization strategies are used in the different countries, we will now turn to cross-national differences in the use of personalization on candidate’s websites. Figure 1 shows that for the information dimensions of personalization there are considerable differences between countries (RQ2). The Czech Republic scores very highly on all three dimensions of personalization, whereas Romanian candidate sites score relatively highly only on the ‘professional’ dimension. Other countries like Poland, Hungary, Estonia and Ireland score highly on the personalization dimensions ‘professional’ and ‘home and family’. Slovakia, Belgium and Sweden score relatively highly on the personalization dimension ‘personal preferences’. In contrast, Portugal scores the lowest on two dimensions of personalization (‘professional’ and ‘home and family’) but they have an average score on ‘personal preferences’. Overall, Portuguese candidates use the personalization strategy only sporadically and thus do not give much personal information on their websites. Greece, the Netherlands and Sweden also do not score very highly on the personalization dimensions ‘professional’ and ‘home and family’. As for ‘personal preferences’ Greece, Cyprus, Ireland and the Netherlands score very poorly.

Figure 1.

Use of the three dimensions of personalization in the 17 countries (normalized mean scores).

Comparing the countries on how frequently candidates’ websites link to their SNS (RQ3) shows that this is not very common. Only candidates in Sweden show above average links directing visitors to their SNS. Other countries that score relatively high are the Netherlands, Ireland and Austria. The remaining countries − such as Hungary, Estonia, Slovakia and Greece − show very little use of SNS (see Figure 6). These findings indicate that in 2009 candidates in most European countries used SNS only marginally as a campaign tool. As such, candidates can be regarded as late adopters.

To answer RQ4 we looked for factors conceptualized at the macro level related to the use of the personalization strategies in EU countries. Because the third dimension of ‘personal preferences’ shows little to no variance across countries we decided to remove this dimension from further analyses.

Figure 2 shows that there is a relation between the political system in the countries and the candidates’ use of the personalization strategy. In general, countries with a post-communist model score more highly on the ‘professional’ dimension and the ‘home and family’ dimension, indicated by their upper-right position in Figure 2. On the other hand, countries with a polarized pluralistic model score relatively poorly on both dimensions of personalization, indicated by the lower-left position. France is the exception to this rule. Lastly, countries with a democratic corporatist model and with a liberal model score moderately on both dimensions.

Figure 2.

Position of countries with different political systems on the dimensions of personalization ‘professional’ and ‘home and family’.

Figure 3 shows that differences between countries can also be interpreted in terms of geographical region. Countries from Central Europe are located in the upper-right position, indicating that candidates’ use of the personalization strategies of ‘professional’ and ‘home and family’ in this region is above average. Countries in southern Europe score in the lower-left position, meaning a low use of ‘professional’ and ‘home and family’ strategies of personalization. Western and Nordic countries are in the middle, indicating an average use of both personalization strategies.

Figure 3.

Position of countries with different regional positions in Europe on the dimensions of personalization ‘professional’ and ‘home and family’.

Most countries that joined the European Union only recently (2004 and 2007) score relatively highly on the personalization strategies ‘professional’ and ‘home and family’ (Figure 4). On the other hand, candidates from countries which have belonged to the EU for longer use these personalization dimensions significantly less. This could indicate that countries with an older member status rely more on earlier, less individually tailored strategies, whereas the countries without an EU tradition need new and individual ways to reach their potential voters due to lack of past performance from their country as a EU member state; also the former communist, authoritarian countries have a history of glorifying political leaders. Maybe practices of presenting professional feats are still engrained in post-communist cultures.

Figure 4.

Positions of countries which joined the European Union in different years on the dimensions of personalization ‘professional’ and ‘home and family’.

Finally we explore whether the trust citizens have in politics is related to candidates’ personalization strategies. Figure 5 shows that in countries where political trust was low candidates score quite highly on ‘professional’ and ‘home and family’. However, for two Mediterranean countries this is quite the opposite: Portugal and Greece score very poorly on ‘professional’ and on ‘home and family’ strategy.

Figure 5.

Position of countries with different amounts of trust that citizens have in politics on the dimensions of personalization ‘professional’ and ‘home and family’.

Looking at the use of links to SNS by candidates, Figures 6 and 7 show that within each political system there is considerable variation in the use of SNS. Still, we also see that in democratic corporatist countries (Western and Nordic Europe) SNS are used more often than in post-communist countries (Eastern Europe). Candidates from the liberal and democratic pluralist countries use SNS on an average level.

Figure 6.

Countries classified by their political system and the extent to which candidates provide links to their SNS (means per country and means per system).

Figure 7.

Countries classified by region and the extent in which candidates provide links to their SNS (means per country and means per region).

In relation to political trust, Figure 8 shows that countries in which political trust is higher candidates also use more links to SNS. A possible explanation could be that if there is no trust in politics it can be expected that citizens are not interested in connecting with politicians and therefore it does not make sense for politicians to put any effort into connecting with them through SNS. Of course there can also be practical explanations, such as the technological developments in a country (see Vergeer et al., 2012). Further research should look more closely at explaining these differences.

Figure 8.

Countries classified by political trust and links to SNS (mean scores).

Conclusion and discussion

This study contributes to the empirical cross-national comparative research on behavioral personalization strategies in election campaigns. Candidates’ use of websites in election campaigns is seen as a first step in behavioral personalization, when candidates choose to have an individual platform instead of a party platform as a campaign tool. At the same time, by using their own sites candidates also circumvent the media, which at election time give most attention to political leaders and larger parties. Using their own sites gives the individual candidate new opportunities to communicate on their own terms directly with voters.

Following the findings of previous studies on web features, in which websites are used most for giving information (Kluver et al., 2007), we looked how candidates use the personalization websites to inform their audience about themselves. The information provided in candidate biographies showed three dimensions of personalization. Most candidates provided factual information about their professional identity (candidate as professional) and family life (candidate as individual). These two types of professionalization are what other scholars have called ‘candidate centered’ and the ‘personality centered’ (cf. Johnstone and Kaid, 2002; Rahat and Shaefer, 2007). The third dimension referring to information that is more private (such as preferences in different areas) and referring to personal identity is provided only occasionally. This suggests that, in general, politicians set certain boundaries for what and what not to disclose to the public.

Often, the personalization of politics is judged from a normative perspective, suggesting that it redirects attention from politics to non-essential personal and non-political information (see Adam and Maier, 2010). Previous research (Hagemann et al., 2005; Van Aelst, 2002) predicts that the personalization of politics will further develop and increasingly concentrate on the personal lives of politicians. However, this study does not confirm this projected increase. Candidates inform citizens mostly about their professional background and somewhat less about their family background. Sharing private information about their preferences appears not to be very common in most European countries. The rising interest in the possibilities SNS provide for candidates to connect with citizens in election campaigns was elaborated. In general, using SNS for campaigning was underutilized in the EU election campaign of 2009. Because only the links on the candidates’ websites were used to indicate the use of SNS, the results should be interpreted with caution. Furthermore, it must be noted that the adoption of SNS like Twitter in political campaigning was still small in 2009; it will be interesting to monitor future developments in the utilization of SNS in election campaigning.

With respect to the data, we acknowledge measurements of personalization strategies are basic. However, the dimensional structure of the forms of personalization used to inform citizens agrees with earlier studies in a national context (Johnstone and Kaid, 2002; Rahat and Shaefer, 2007). Therefore, even with basic measurements we are still able to conduct a comparative study that tries to clarify differences found between countries looking at national institutional variables. Thus this research contributes the attempts to gain more insight into the personalization strategies used by politicians rather than through media coverage (cf. Adam and Maier, 2010). Furthermore, because the study focused on the European elections and therefore contained cross-national comparisons, some concessions had to be made in measuring the different forms of personalization strategies.

For interpreting differences between the EU countries, this study focused on a number of concepts. In regard to the countries in Central Europe that use relatively more behavior personalization strategies on their websites, it can be noted that they also joined the European Union recently. Furthermore, the population in these countries show little political trust. The fact that they are post-communist states, and thus have a long tradition of dominant political leaders and only a relatively short history of democracy, could explain the low political trust. There is a tension visible between politicians providing relatively more information about themselves on their websites and a society in which citizens do not trust politics.

Countries that joined the EU only recently use more personalization strategies on their websites: a possible explanation could be that these candidates do not have a long tradition of these second-order election campaigns and therefore are more open and already responding to developments in the professionalization and modernization of election campaigns (Zittel, 2009). Because these elections are relatively new to politicians as well as citizens, candidates might have chosen to present themselves on a more personal level, such as their being an experienced professional politician. This is in line with findings that overall the countries with a long European tradition, Western countries, long-time EU members and citizens having more political trust, use the personalization strategies less.

Despite the fact that the EP elections are a very suitable case for cross-national comparative research (Jankowski et al., 2005), these elections are often referred to as second-order elections. In most countries political involvement in European politics is not very high and the voting turnout is relatively low (see Vergeer et al., 2012). It is not clear whether the nature of the EP elections had any influence on the way candidates perform on their campaign websites. For this it is also interesting to compare and further elaborate the use of the personalization strategy and the three different dimensions we have distinguished in the countries under study during national elections as well as future EP elections. This would develop further insight into the personalization strategy, particularly because for national elections it could be expected that the candidates would be better known by the voters and they would have a greater interest in getting votes for their own position.

Finally, these results give more insight into personalization strategy (Adam and Maier, 2010). This study is one of the first that examines different dimensions of personalization in politics within a broad international scope. (see Gibson and Ward, 2009; Karvonen, 2010). Further studies should monitor developments coming with the introduction of Web 2.0, because although not used frequently in 2009 it takes time to adopt these kinds of innovations.

Footnotes

Appendix 1

Appendix 2 Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the following people for coding the websites in their respective countries. Austria: Flooh Perlot and Peter Filzmaier; Belgium: Eva De Smedt and Wim Vanobberghen; Cyprus: Dimitra Milioni; Czech Republic: Václav Štetka; Estonia: Ülle Toole; France: Karolina Koc Michalska and Thierry Vedel; Germany: Eva Schweitzer; Greece: Marianna Psilla, Nikos Leandros, Sofia Fourouli and Vassiliki Paliatsa; Hungary: Gabriella Szabó and Zsuzsanna Mihályffy; Ireland: Lugh O Braonain; Italy: Cristian Vaccari and James Newell; the Netherlands: Liesbeth Hermans, Nicole Louwers, Maurice Vergeer; Poland: Michal Jacunski; Portugal: Carlos Cunha; Romania: Dorina Gutu; Slovakia: Branislav Ondrasik; Sweden: Lars Lundgren; United Kingdom: Darren Lilleker and Nigel Jackson.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Liesbeth Hermans is Assistant Professor, Department of Communication Science, Radboud University, Nijmegen. She also works as a senior researcher at the Media Research Centre, University of Applied Science Windesheim (Netherlands). Her field of research is journalism studies and political communication. She is coordinator of the project ‘Journalists in the digital age’, a longitudinal study of trends in Dutch journalism.

Maurice Vergeer is a PhD in Communication Science, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. His work focuses on people’s Internet use and social capital, political communication on the Internet, and journalists’ use of the Internet.

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