Digital media have come to play an important role in the work of political parties and campaign organizations all over the world. Examples for the use of digital media in the United States (US) like Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns of 2008 and 2012 and Donald Trump’s campaign of 2016 dominate the public imagination.
This book offers a framework for the analysis of political communication in election campaigns based on digital trace data that documents political behavior, interests and opinions. The author investigates the data-generating processes leading users to interact with digital services in politically relevant contexts. These interactions produce digital traces, which in turn can be analyzed to dra…