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Sailing Uncharted Waters with Old Boats? COVID-19 and the Digitalization and Professionalization of Presidential Campaigns in Portugal
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Orientador(es)
Resumo(s)
This article investigates the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic fostered significant
shifts in election campaigning. The argument is that COVID-19 might have had an impact on both
digitalization and professionalization, which might have been regarded as necessary strategies to
curb the difficulties brought about by the pandemic. We apply a most similar systems design with a
threefold comparative scheme in order to capture and isolate such effects in the campaigns preceding
the 2021 Portuguese presidential elections, using data from campaign spending, campaign activities,
and social media activity and impact. Results show that the pandemic crisis has not, generally
speaking, brought about a higher level of digitalization of electoral campaigns, in spite of online
events having become more common. On the contrary, while there were signs of feebler patterns of
normalization of online competition in 2021 vis-à-vis 2016, namely in terms of engagement, normalization
was stronger after the lockdown than before. Lastly, relative investment in professionalization
was similar in 2016 and 2021, and the difference between the budgeted and the actual investment in
2021 cannot be attributed to the worsening of the pandemic situation or to the lockdown. In sum,
we depict a scenario of remarkable stability of the electoral campaigns put forward by presidential
candidates in terms of digitalization and professionalization. Its possible causes and consequences
are discussed.
Descrição
Palavras-chave
Presidential elections Campaigns COVID-19 Digitalization Normalization Equalization Professionalization Portugal
Contexto Educativo
Citação
Santana-Pereira, J., Ferrinho Lopes, H., Nina, S. R. (2023). Sailing Uncharted Waters with Old Boats? COVID-19 and the Digitalization and Professionalization of Presidential Campaigns in Portugal. Social Sciences, 12(1):45. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12010045