How Cyber Is Your Party?: Measuring Party Digitalization Toward A Better Understanding Of Digital Politics

(Panel 2) Political parties’ use of online platforms is sharply increasing. In the Spanish context, most parties offer their member a member-exclusive intranet in which to log in and use some of its features. The type of services that each platform has changes party to party. And some parties still lack a platform overall. This paper proposes creating an index to measure party digitalization. The goal is not only to examine how each party allows its members to participate, but also to compare them and see what parties have a greater digital presence than others. Measuring and comparing parties serve as a way of studying the incentives of those parties to establish said platforms. Answering what do parties with more open platforms have in common between their leadership and voters will clarify why some parties value plataformization more than others, as well as how do they campaign and organize internally.