Digital Media and the Surge of Political Outsiders: Explaining the Success of Political Challengers in the United States, Germany, and China

U.S. has a long history of outsiders running for president or gunning for power in general. Labor leader Eugene Debs ran five times as a Socialist candidate for president, and won 6 percent of the popular vote in 1912. Ronald Reagan ran as a “Washington outsider,” though he had already established political credentials as the governor of California. Ross Perot, a billionaire businessman, ran as an independent candidate in 1992, winning about 19 percent of the popular vote. But in most bids for the presidency and other high offices, outsiders have faced insurmountable obstacles in gaining the media coverage, financial support, and voter constituencies generated by established parties running traditional campaigns. That is, until the internet.

Jungherr, Schroeder, and Stier say the advent of the digital media fundamentally changed the political playing field by allowing outsiders to bypass the traditional gatekeepers and established institutions. By “digital media” they mean “the set of institutions and infrastructures allowing the production, distribution, and searching of information online” (Jungherr, Schroeder, & Stier, p.2). In other words, the internet and especially social media. This seems intuitively true, and Jungherr, Schroeder, and Stier provide concrete examples from three very different political scenarios: the 2016 U.S. presidential election of Donald Trump; the rise of the left-leaning Pirate Party and the far right-leaning AfD in Germany; and ultranationalist activists in China.

In each case, the outsider campaigners used an online presence to attract attention and support, often while inciting controversy and making outrageous claims about the political establishment and status quo. As the outsiders’ social media audience grew, they gained coverage in traditional media which served to raise their visibility and further broadcast and amplify their messages. In many cases the controversial rhetoric of the outsiders, inserted into digital media space and amplified by traditional media, has shifted the Overton Window of tolerable political discourse (Mackinac Center for Public Policy), leading to policies and actions that were previously anathema. Digital media thus allows outsiders to mount ongoing campaigns that challenge the very legitimacy of the institutions that served as gatekeepers of political language and power in the pre-internet world.

It’s interesting that the authors cite Barack Obama’s use of digital media in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, but fail to mention Howard Dean’s innovations in 2004. Dean, the early frontrunner, raised most of his campaign funding from small donors through the internet (CNN 2003), built a massive email list used by his campaign to communicate with supporters, and was one of the first presidential candidates to establish a strong online presence through a sophisticated campaign website (Howard Dean Campaign). His bid for the White House began to slump after the Iowa caucus, when his performance of what became known as the “I Have a Scream” speech ignited a media feeding frenzy that quickly spread far and wide online (CNN 2004). As the internet giveth, so too it can taketh away.

The authors say their study provides “a novel explanation that systematically accounts for the political consequences of digital media” (Jungherr, Schroeder, & Stier, p.1). The clarity with which they present evidence and the range of examples they cite strongly support this argument. Notably, they say the effect of digital media in politics is not deterministic; it simply provides an opportunity not available before the internet. They argue that this opportunity can be used by outsiders across the political and ideological spectrum.

But the examples cited focus on the rise of right-wing and would-be authoritarian outsiders, even in China where the authors say the government largely tolerates online activities of Chinese ultranationalists. Beyond this paper, further research might document and analyze examples of the “digital media effect” (my term, not the authors’) on the rise of progressive outsiders whose concerns include things like energy and environmental policy sanity, economic and social equity, and universal human rights.

Paper

Jungherr, Andreas, Ralph Schroeder, and Sebastian Stier. 2019. “Digital Media and the Surge of Political Outsiders: Explaining the Success of Political Challengers in the United States, Germany, and China.” Social Media + Society 5 (3): 2056305119875439. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305119875439.

Additional References

CNN. 2003. “CNN.Com – Dean to Let Supporters Decide Whether to Abandon Public Financing – Nov. 5, 2003.” November 5, 2003. http://edition.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/11/05/elec04.prez.dean.financing/index.html.

CNN. 2004. “‘Dean Scream’ Becomes Online Hit,” January 23, 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3422809.stm.

Howard Dean Campaign. 2004. “Wayback Machine: Howard Dean for America.” January 29, 2004. https://web.archive.org/web/20040129143845/http://howarddean.com/.

Mackinac Center for Public Policy. n.d. “The Overton Window.” Accessed October 7, 2019. http://www.mackinac.org/OvertonWindow.