The new art of running for office

[00:00:06] Karine Morin: Welcome to the Big Thinking Podcast, where we discuss the most important and interesting issues of our time with leading researchers in the humanities and social sciences. I'm Karine Morin, President and CEO of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and I'm pleased to host today's episode.

[00:00:27] Whether in the middle of an election campaign or between ballots, politicians and political parties never really leave the public stage, which has now gone digital.  

[00:00:40] In this episode, we explore how political figures build their image, capture our attention, and shape public debate through sophisticated marketing strategies.

[00:00:52] So, how do political parties sell their political messages, and at what cost? To shed some light on the phenomenon of political marketing, I'm pleased to welcome Thierry Giasson, Professor in the Department of Political Science at Université Laval.  

[00:01:13] I'd like to start with an overview of your career development. You have a bachelor's degree in journalism from the Université du Québec à Montréal, UQAM, and a master's degree in political science from the Université de Montréal. It was during these studies that you worked at Radio-Canada.

[00:01:28] But it seems to me that this experience left you a little hungry for more, as you went back to school to complete a doctorate in political science. And all this ultimately led you to Laval University. Can you tell me if there was a moment or perhaps more than a moment when your interests crystallized and your area expertise in political marketing began to take shape?

[00:01:53] Thierry Giasson: Yes, there are two moments, I think, in my career, at the start of my career, the formative period of my studies when I realized I was interested in studying political communication. That's how it all started.  

[00:02:16] So the first moment was when I was, I'll say it, when I joined Radio-Canada as a journalist on the news desk. So we're at the turn of the 2000s, and it's not a period that's very, very bright for the media.

[00:02:30] Even back then, it was a difficult time. There were job cuts all over the place, and the position I had access to was that of supernumerary news editor. And so I worked very atypical hours, entering the office very early in the newsroom, with lots of assignments to deal with.

[00:02:50] It's a bit of a sausage factory, in fact, and it really shocked me to see how much you had to be in the newsroom, in the action, and that there wasn't much space for reflection. It wasn't my job, it was the job of the journalists who sent us things, which we then had to adapt to suit the formats, the news bulletins and sometimes even the news readers for whom we were writing the news.

[00:03:17] That surprised me a bit, it made me lose my illusions about the journalistic profession, about what I'd been taught at university, about principles and values.

[00:03:31] At the same time, I was starting my master's degree, pursuing my master's degree, and as part of my master's degree, I studied the junction between communication, the development a campaign and its coverage in the media.  

[00:03:45] I studied the construction of the media agenda during the 1995 referendum campaign to try to see which of the two political camps or the two media I was studying, which were two major newspapers - so La Presse and Le Devoir - and to try to see who was leading referendum agenda, was it the media's lead or were we following what the camps were presenting in their press releases, in their activities of the day during the campaign.

[00:04:17] My first contact with political communication was through this work, and the person who was supervising me at the time, a fantastic professor by the name of Richard Nadeau, a professor at the Université de Montréal, suggested that I pursue a doctorate.

[00:04:33] And so I went on to study for my doctorate and decided to leave journalism as well. I realized that journalism, in the end, in that formula, wasn't for me. I'd have another Radio-Canada assignment. I'll be working for digital media writing multimedia reports.

[00:04:52] And those were formats I liked, where I could do analysis. I was doing my job as a journalist, not just a news editor. Unfortunately, that position was abolished after a labor dispute at Radio-Canada. So I decided to continue and finish my doctoral studies, and I did my thesis on televised debates.

[00:05:13] I worked with and interviewed strategists who prepared politicians, and some of these strategists talked to me about political marketing. And so I dug into this aspect of political marketing practices as part of my thesis and then in collaborations that would develop in the early years of my work as a university professor.

[00:05:40] Karine Morin: I'm going to come back very soon to defining what political marketing is, but just before that, can I ask about interests that seem pan-Canadian to me. And if there's a choice here or it's evolving, maybe in terms of collaborations, your interests are beyond politics in Quebec, really a pan-Canadian perspective, is there an explanation behind that?  

[00:06:08] Thierry Giasson: That's a good question. I did my dissertation on a very important political moment in Quebec, referendum election of '95. And as part of my doctorate, I studied a federal campaign, the 2000 federal election. I talked to the politicians who took part in the debates during that election, I talked to their consultants, their advisors, the strategists who accompanied them.

[00:06:34] I was also socialized in my family, even though my parents are sovereigntists, I can say that. And every summer, we traveled across Canada, there were big conventions, different commissions on work accident prevention, and my father often represented with other people - the Quebec Commission - and we joined him, the kids.  

[00:06:59] So I've traveled a lot across Canada, and I have an appreciation for what this country represents, but I also have an interest in Canadian politics because, in my opinion, it's a political space that dictates a lot of things and dictates, among other things, what can happen at the provincial level.  

[00:07:20] And then in Quebec politics, we have a lot of ties with the federal government, we have a lot of agreements that some other provinces don't have. So for me, it's also interesting to study the broader Canadian reality, then the Canadian political reality, Canadian federal elections. I also worked as a research assistant when I was a master's student at the Canadian Election Study.

[00:07:50] Karine Morin: Now, I know you teach complete courses on what political marketing is, but for a podcast, what does it boil down to? How do you explain political marketing?  

[00:08:01] Thierry Giasson: It can be explained quite simply. In other words, political marketing is the application of the principles that guide commercial marketing to political activity, to the political sphere. And these principles, in fact the basis, the central principle that accompanies this philosophy, is that we must first develop an offer based on the needs that exist in the market we're trying penetrate.  

[00:08:28] So the market is the electorate, in the Canadian political space, the needs are the needs expressed by the voters. And so the objective is to understand who makes up the electorate, what are their needs? What are their expectations? What are their concerns? What's important to them?  

[00:08:50] And then, we try identify segments of the market, profiles voters who share the same values, aspirations and needs as militant voters and party supporters, but who don't necessarily vote for the party that's trying to reach them.

[00:09:12] So the objective is identify these segments that are close to the voters who make up our natural support base and to develop a political offer, a political program that will speak to them. So to position ourselves as a political party on issues that are important to these voters.

[00:09:32] To offer them promises on these issues that meet their aspirations, so to make a political offer that is, I'd say, more niche, more specialized, more targeted, and then to communicate it. So, political marketing is the use of principles and techniques that are used and developed in commercial marketing, to apply them to the development political offers, and to do it in a context, usually an electoral context, but governments also do marketing once they're in power.  

[00:10:04] So that's it, it's a two-stage process. There's a more strategic phase, where we develop a strategy, we do market research, we segment the electorate into profiles, we target profiles we consider interesting, and we also identify the profiles that are unlikely to vote for the party.

[00:10:25] And then we position an offer, so we develop an offer based on elements that are important for the groups we've targeted. Then, in a second phase, we'll engage in what we call tactical marketing, i.e., operationalization, we'll think about the messages, we'll think about the distribution strategy, we'll work on the communication of the positioning platform proposal.  

[00:10:48] And all this is then translated into specific means of communication that take place during an election campaign. So, there are two stages, there are different steps that parties usually follow to carry out the political marketing exercise.

[00:11:04] Karine Morin: There are plenty of very busy people working full-time, whether there's an election or not.

[00:11:10] Thierry Giasson: Exactly.  

[00:11:11] Karine Morin: So, if you look at the end of these courses, there's this dissemination that needs to be done, this communication that's done through different media. And here's what I'd like. While we're on the subject of traditional media, could you tell us what remains of traditional media today? What is their relative importance today for political parties during election campaigns in particular?

[00:11:37] Thierry Giasson: So the objective for a political party is to communicate, to get in touch as directly as possible with the segments it has identified in the strategic marketing phase.

[00:11:50] And this, this whole strategic marketing exercise, is done several months before an election  is called, mobilizing a very large volume of data, all kinds of data.  

[00:12:01] But the ultimate goal is to get people out on voting day, for us, the people we've identified, and during the election campaign, they have access to our message, the message we've developed specifically for them to meet their needs, their aspirations.

[00:12:16] And so we're going to design a distribution plan, a media plan, a media distribution plan, a communications plan, to reach these people. Some of these people still use traditional media today, while others will use digital social media platforms for their information.

[00:12:35] But we mustn't lose sight of the fact that there are still thousands of Canadians, hundreds of thousands of Canadians who consume traditional media. The media are going to change the medium from which we access information that is produced by a professional journalistic organization - and then traditional - but the fact of getting information through journalistic information is still very important for hundreds of thousands of Canadians.  

[00:13:07] So to think that all Canadians get their information on digital social media, that's not true, there are some Canadians who get their information mainly there, there are some Canadians who are accidentally exposed to information they have little interest in politics, so they don't get much information on politics.

[00:13:27] But, they'll see a past news item, a member of their network or people who follow them will share it on their social networks - there, it's complicated to do so, for example on Meta, because Facebook has decided not to respect Canadian regulations, so Facebook no longer allows us to share information produced by Canadian media on these platforms. But nevertheless, we can do it on other platforms.

[00:13:54] So, there's still a significant proportion of voters who get their information through the media, through the information that's produced by the traditional media. I'd put it that way, but not necessarily on traditional media.  

[00:14:10] Karine Morin: So we're definitely describing a situation where it's not two worlds to talk about traditional media and social media. There are things that will be produced  for one of the media, but that can be found on, among others, social media.

[00:14:24] Now, with this arrival of different digital platforms, we're talking about Facebook, we're talking about Twitter which has become X, we're talking newly about Bluesky, we're talking about Instagram for others, we're talking about YouTube, TikTok - there are several. How would you characterize the use of political marketing on these social media networks, of these types, what more does it represent?

[00:14:53] Thierry Giasson: Well, it's central, in the last 10 years or so, it became a communications space that the parties have all invested in, and the people who are digital strategists who used to advise campaigns and still do, to determine the right axes and the right platforms on which to communicate, are at the heart of campaign organization.  

[00:15:13] They're in the War Rooms and the campaigns are integrated for traditional media and digital social media. Because again, there are people who don't consume traditional media as much anymore, and then certain parties want to be able to get in touch with them.

[00:15:27] So we also have to find ways of communicating with them. So sometimes for certain segments of the electorate, people who are not very interested in politics, not very informed about politics, but who will use digital social media extensively for entertainment, for example, to follow celebrities, to share information and games with their families, well, we'll broadcast advertising to these people.

[00:15:55] So, it's very important for the parties to use these media to talk to the segment they want to talk to, who end up using these platforms for reasons other than being informed and following politics. So we're going to try to create accidental exposure to messages by running targeted advertising on social media platforms.

[00:16:20] Karine Morin: So we recognize that this is an advantage for political parties, but what would you say about the electorate? What does it mean to them that this information appears without them necessarily looking for it? In your opinion, can we say that perspective social media offer better interaction with the public, does it make politics more accessible, more inclusive or more intrusive?

[00:16:49] Thierry Giasson: Politics has always been intrusive. In days of the media, very strong traditional media, the parties spent fortunes on advertising - they still do - airing TV ads in prime time, the objective of advertising, that's why we do it, is that we don't know when we're going to be exposed to it.

[00:17:09] It's accidental exposure. So there are people who zap during the ads, and there are people who get up and go do something else during the ads, there are people who stay in front of their TV and listen to the ads. There's also radio advertising that the parties will do, there's print advertising in newspapers, there's advertising on bulletin boards.  

[00:17:27] So we're exposed to it all the time, and the big advantage for political parties is the hyper-targeting that social media platforms can do, and targeting very small segments of the electorate. So we can decide to talk to women - and I'm just giving an example - aged 34 to 38 who live in such and such a place.

[00:17:52] And only those people are going to be exposed to messages. What does that do? It creates micro-publics, it creates micro-campaigns that mean that on digital social media, we no longer have access to a uniform national campaign, we're exposed to messages that are potentially different from those to which our parents, our neighbors, our work colleagues will be exposed.

[00:18:17] So there's a kind of access to information issue that's problematic, and when you target certain segments of the electorate, you don't target others, and so the interests, the needs, the aspirations of these other voters that a party doesn't consider interesting for electoral purposes aren't represented.

[00:18:41] We don't talk to these people. And so people don't have access to the whole campaign of a political party. For me, that's a huge problem because it actually leads to issues. Representation of interests, which is at the heart of our political system, which is a system of democracy, of representation where all the parties are supposed to represent a diversity of interests, defend a diversity of interests and develop public policies that respond to a diversity of interests, not just niche interests, and for the last twenty years or so in Canada, unfortunately, that's what we've been exposed to at the moment.

[00:19:18] Karine Morin: I hear you talking about the tension you're concerned about, we're getting a bit into the ethical aspects, I imagine of political marketing, by explaining how the parties are going to go looking for profiles, then target with enough precision the type of people they want to address.

[00:19:42] Are you concerned about collection and use of personal data? Is this a threat to privacy that annoys you?  

[00:19:53] Thierry Giasson: Ah yes, it's a huge concern for me because, if we go back to the strategic marketing phase where the parties data, analyze the composition of the electorate. The parties use an enormous amount of personal data on us, and Elections Canada, Elections Québec and Elections Ontario give political parties access to all the data at the heart of the permanent voters list.

[00:20:19] So the parties use this in databases that they'll process through statistical analysis processes, logistic regressions, but also now a lot through algorithmic processes to develop profiles. We'll pair this with consumer data, so there are companies selling data on consumers, on their consumers, to all sorts of clients.

[00:20:42] We know that in the past, for example, the Conservative Party of Canada bought data of this type, as presented, for example, by Susan Delacourt in her book Shopping for Votes.  

[00:20:53] And all this is not governed by electoral law in Canada. There are very few guidelines, unlike we see in Europe or even in British Columbia, the only jurisdiction where parties are subject to very clear guidelines in terms of information collection and management that are very rigid, which are inspired by the RGPD of the General Data Protection Regulation in Europe, is British Columbia.  

[00:21:17] And what's special is that - and this applies to all parties that campaign and collect data on British Columbians - whether it's for a provincial, municipal or federal election. And the federal parties have challenged this law in the courts to try to have it invalidated, they don't want any restrictions imposed on them.

[00:21:39] And that's why there are no guidelines at the moment in the federal law, the federal electoral law, and in Quebec, from 2020 to 2021, the Quebec government presented a project aimed at modernizing the entire regulatory perimeter for data use by all organizations that collect personal data on Quebecers, including political parties for the first time.

[00:22:00] And parliamentarians voted themselves thirty exemptions to the application of the law, which means that the law doesn't apply, a law that applies to all other organizations that collate data, these articles don't apply to Quebec citizens. So the parties can still do they want.

[00:22:17] There's a huge problem, the parties are in a conflict interest, they don't want us to regulate the way they do things, which, if they're not properly regulated, can lead to abuse, leaks and identity theft. As we've seen, some major organizations have had their data compromised, and political parties certainly don't have the resources to protect the huge databases they have on us.

[00:22:46] So this concerns me enormously, obviously, as a citizen, but it also concerns me as a researcher, and I have to tell you that I've been studying Quebec's reality for a year now, and we're trying to understand how we got to this point, and that made me very angry.  

[00:23:03] It's the first time as a researcher that I've been angry about something I've observed. And it's a bit of a strange feeling to have to deal with, to have to regulate yourself, and then find a calm way of talking about an issue that is excessively problematic, in my opinion, and for Canadians as a whole. And Canadians don't seem to be aware of the potential impact it can have on their lives.  

[00:23:39] Karine Morin: I get the impression that we don't talk much about this, compared to the other subject I'd like to touch on briefly, but you referred earlier to Meta, which operates Facebook and also Instagram, which have decided relax moderation of discriminatory and even hateful content. Are you also concerned to see that you were saying there are no guidelines in relation to what political parties can do.

[00:23:58] We also let social media manage these political debates, these political questions, these political presentations as they see fit. Do you think that, among other things, this can lead to a radicalization or polarization of the debate and that we let it go because it's the free market of political ideas?

[00:24:20] Thierry Giasson: It's a good question, there are principles involved, freedom of expression, the free market, free choice too, the choice to access a platform or decide not to access it, to join a platform, not to join it. I believe that, as soon as a Parliament and its elected representatives put in place policies designed to protect the media and invite the big groups, the big digital social media platforms, to contribute to the production of information that they relay abundantly on their platforms and from which they draw advertising revenue, they should be asked to share part of their advertising revenue with the people who produce content they relay.

[00:25:15] And when a huge company refuses to do so, it should immediately impose a duty of reserve with regard to this platform, and the political parties whose representatives voted for this law should impose on themselves not to buy advertising and no longer to have any transactional relationship with this platform.

[00:25:38] To come back to the question about polarization, yes, clearly, there are platforms that profit from this polarization. So when there's debate, when there's polarization, when there's drama, it attention. There's plenty of research showing that. So we all say that we're, we're, we're for civility and we want to behave in a cordial, respectful way, but as soon we're exposed to things that are violent, aggressive, out of the ordinary, there are people who are captivated and who maintain these discussions, and this creates traffic, virality and revenue for profit-making companies. 

[00:26:30] So there's no incentive, again, for these big companies to moderate what happens on the platform because it generates traffic, it generates clicks and it generates revenue.

[00:26:45] So there's  whole economic architecture of these platforms, which thwarts the democratic foundations of our society, I would say of our societies. We obviously have laws that protect against defamation and against [...] in terms of security. These are exemptions that are deemed valid by the courts to limit freedom of expression.  

[00:27:15] But nonetheless, logically, we should be able, as a society, to impose a certain number of principles on these companies to ensure cordial exchanges, respectful exchanges, on politics and on our societal life, because there are several studies, there are several people who frequent these media not for information, for entertainment, but who are informed by the tape.

[00:27:41] Karine Morin: I hear you proposing, or at least, even demonstrating that it's time for a major reform. Do you think it's going to come through the technological advances of artificial intelligence? Is that perhaps your hope, your hope of believing that major changes could be made to the regulation of these media or how they're used by political parties, how they're used for political marketing, are you hopeful of reform?

[00:28:12] Thierry Giasson: I'm not very optimistic. Honestly, when I look at artificial intelligence, when I look at the possibilities that are opening up for political parties to produce messages, to produce communication, I see the abuses that have taken place in other jurisdictions where there are very few electoral regulations and where there doesn't seem to be a need. Just think of the elections in Argentina, Brazil and the United States.  

[00:28:39] So, even though the big a priori, the big democracies are having trouble dealing with this, we don't seem to be seeing any large-scale, I would say fraudulent, use of artificial intelligence to spread messages in this election.  

[00:28:57] And once again, there are many micro-campaigns going on at the same time, so it's a bit annoying, I, I, if the past is a guarantee of the future, we're off to a bad start, and I don't think it's right that there should be a change in the political parties that I've been talking to parliamentarians about for 10 years now, and I don't see things changing, and that worries me a lot, and the electoral regulatory bodies seem to be  difficulty imposing guidelines on the political parties that will protect us a little better.  

[00:29:34] Karine Morin: It's still important for all of us to be vigilant in our consumption of political information.

[00:29:40] Thierry Giasson: Objectively, we're hopeful, because the political classes are transforming, changing, and the experience in British Columbia shows us that there are politicians, there are elected representatives who have at heart to defend the privacy interests, the personal data of their constituents, and that's important, I think, to keep in mind, and then we'll, we'll wish each other a better tomorrow.

[00:30:11] Karine Morin: Thank you for listening to the Big Thinking Podcast, and thank you to our guest Thierry Giasson. I would also like to thank our friends and partners at the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the production company CitedMedia, without whom this podcast would not be possible.  

[00:30:54] You can find all the episodes on your favorite podcast platform and let us know what you thought of this episode by connecting with us on social media. À la prochaine!