Conclusion

This final chapter recaps the arguments and discusses implications of how campaigns have used DCTs. By only looking at digital practices of political campaigns, it is worrisome that we fail to see that for most campaigns digital media is still only a small part of the overall focus of campaigns. Greater appreciation is needed for understanding DCT use in the context of other factors of a campaign. Campaigns have dramatically changed their strategies over time as they learned the benefits and the challenges of communicating with the public and the media through DCTs. In 1996 they barely interacted with the public and controlled the message as much as possible. By 2016, they were using a variety of interactive affordances to mobilize supporters, attack opponents, and influence the news media’s agenda through their digital media accounts. They also learned to capitalize on the public’s data that they generate about themselves when they interact with the campaign online and in partnering with digital technology companies, such as Facebook, to engage in unprecedented micro-targeting through paid ads.