Controlled interactivity and engagement in digitally enabled campaigning

This study aims to enrich the understanding of US presidential campaigns and primaries through a focus on interactivity and engagement in digitally-enabled campaigning efforts. Building on Stromer-Galley’s (2014) account of digital presidential campaigns, I will reassess the role played by volunteers within such efforts, comparing how different digital and participative infrastructures define patterns and degrees of interactivity and engagement. The analysis of the three cases taken into account (Dean 2004, Obama 2008, Sanders 2016) allows to formulate some generalizations: while interactivity is usually amplified through digital tools, volunteer engagement with staffers is often allowed – even though controlled from above -, while organizational engagement is always prevented. These patterns of leverage are coherent with those established by other actors dwelling in the institutional political arena.