New digital communication strategies: the effects of personalized and interactive political communication

In communication research, it has been claimed that two important characteristics of online political communication, personalized and interactive two-way communication, can mobilize citizens to become more politically involved. In a survey-embedded experiment, we examine whether levels of personalization of online political communication and the use of specific interactive features increases political involvement among citizens. We predicted that personalized (vs. non-personalized) and high (vs. low) interactive communication both have a positive main effect on involvement. Furthermore, we expected an interaction effect between interactive and personalized communication. The results demonstrate that both highly interactive and personalized communication gives individuals the feeling that they have more opportunities to engage in political dialogues and that there is less distant between them and politics. Moreover, we also found that the combined effect of personalized, highly interactive communication has an even stronger positive effect. Thereby, characteristics of new media indeed contribute to citizens’ political involvement.