Different Shades of Cooperation: Mapping Political Parties’ Involvement With Influencers

Nils S. Borchers
Additional contact information
Nils S. Borchers: Institute of Media Studies, University of Tübingen, Germany

Media and Communication, 2026, vol. 14

Abstract: As social media influencers receive increased attention as intermediaries in the political domain, political parties are seeking to expand their involvement with them. However, knowledge of how parties get involved with influencers remains limited. This study presents a qualitative mapping of parties’ influencer engagement, drawing on a secondary analysis of two datasets containing a combined 25 expert interviews with party communicators from Germany. It theorizes influencer involvement as the parties’ management of social interactions. Employing an adapted version of Godes et al.’s (2005) framework for analyzing a firm’s management of social interactions, it systemizes the 35 identified cases of influencer involvement as instances of different management strategies. While the moderator strategy—characterized by relationship-building and information exchange—emerged as the most prevalent, the participant strategy—marked by partisan collaboration—enjoyed the highest popularity. Overall, the findings indicate that the parties’ influencer involvement is still in a formative phase, marked by experimental practices, resource constraints, and ambivalence toward influencer autonomy.

Keywords: communication management; digital campaigning; political communication; political marketing; social media influencers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/11677 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:meanco:v14:y:2026:a:11677

DOI: 10.17645/mac.11677

Access Statistics for this article

Media and Communication is currently edited by Raquel Silva

More articles in Media and Communication from Cogitatio Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by António Vieira () and IT Department ().