- Research area
Political competition
Parties · Campaigns · Elections
Parties and campaigns use digital tools to organize their work, raise resources, reach voters, and signal competence. I examine new practices, innovation processes, and how organizations learn. I also study how challengers use digital media to bypass established parties and legacy media.
For parties, campaigners, and election observers: what digital tools really change in a campaign.
Selected publications
- Retooling Politics
Do digital media empower the weak or break democracy? A balanced account of data-driven politics, political information, campaign effects, and political organizations.
- Digital Media and the Surge of Political Outsiders
Digital media let outsiders route around parties and legacy media, which once filtered out extreme positions. This helps explain the success of challengers in the United States, Germany, and China.
- Four Functions of Digital Tools in Election Campaigns
In Germany’s 2013 federal election, parties used digital tools as American campaigns do: to organize their work, to be present online, to raise resources, and to signal competence. Websites and daily work routines mattered most; online fundraising, central in the United States, mattered little.
Recent publications 9
Work in progress 1
- The Hidden Costs of AI-Mediated Political Outreach: Persuasion and AI Penalties in the US and UKAndreas Jungherr and Adrian Rauchfleisch
2026 4
- Wahlkampf mit KI: Nicht jede Nutzung ist problematischAndreas Jungherr, Adrian Rauchfleisch, and Alexander Wuttke
- Artificial Intelligence in Election Campaigns: Perceptions, Penalties, and ImplicationsAndreas Jungherr, Adrian Rauchfleisch, and Alexander Wuttke
- Social Media als Wahlkampfinstrument – entscheidet TikTok über unsere Demokratie?Andreas Jungherr
- Soziale Medien als politische Bühne – Parteien, Wahlkämpfe und neue ÖffentlichkeitenAndreas Jungherr
2025 2
- Explaining Public Preferences for Regulating Artificial Intelligence in Election Campaigns: Evidence from the U.S. and TaiwanAdrian Rauchfleisch, Andreas Jungherr, and Alexander Wuttke
- Wahlkampf digital: Öffentlichkeit, Koordination und künstliche IntelligenzAndreas Jungherr