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My dissertation deals with how what I call ‘personalized political communication’ is organized in electoral campaigns in the U.S. I focus is what political professionals call the ‘ground war’ or ‘field’, most importantly door-to-door canvassing and phone banking, both done by either volunteers or paid part-time employees. This kind of communication is personalized in the sense that people, and not television, websites, etc, serve as media for messages.

Survey research demonstrates that tens of millions of citizens are contacted in person or by phone by parties and candidates each cycle (cf. ANES), and experimental research in political science suggests that it works (cf. the Yale studies).

Through participants-observation and analysis of the organizational forms and various technologies involved, I aim to connect what we know from the surveys about the extent and from experiments about the effects of personalized political communication with an analysis of how it comes about. My work thus deals with how people are mobilized, organized, targeted, and how they experience contacts with the people they talk to when they engage in personalized political communication.

The hope is that my project will contribute to a better understanding of various forms of political communication, the relationship between campaigns and civic engagement, and the changing organizational forms of democratic politics.

I always find it very useful and stimulating to present my work in progress in this area, so if you think that your program or organization could use a discussion of some of these themes, feel free to contact me, and we might be able to work something out.