“Hey! I’m getting my friends together to host a book swap in three weeks. Can I send you more info? It will be on a Wednesday night, May 24th, from 6-9 p.m. Let me know if you’re available!”
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This is one of the most important things you need to do to set your party up for success. Give yourself at least three weeks in advance to invite people and collect RSVPs. It will ensure that you have enough time to fill up your list of RSVPs.
The second most important thing you need to do is collect RSVPs. You can use a free online event platform like Mixily, Paperless Post, Partiful, etc. to collect RSVPs for your swap party. This will help increase your attendance rate and let people know what to expect.
On your invitation page, include all the details and expectations for what to bring. By being clear and specific about the condition of items, you can ensure that everyone has a positive experience and receives items that are in good condition.
Hosting a party at home can be convenient and cost-effective, as you already have many of the necessary amenities on hand for your swap party. However, if you don’t have the space for a party in your own home, renting a venue can be a great alternative. See other venue options here.
A co-working space may have rooms available for rent that can be suitable for hosting a party. Make sure to consider factors such as the size of the room, the availability of tables and chairs, and any other amenities that may be necessary for your party.
A: This is why setting clear themes and guidelines is important. If you notice an imbalance, you can adjust future invitations to encourage variety. For the current event, consider creating subcategories (e.g., separating dresses from tops) or allowing guests to take home unswapped items.
A: Use a ticket or token system where each person receives the same number of tokens based on items brought. Another option is to organize swap rounds where everyone gets a turn to choose. The key is establishing clear rules upfront and sticking to them.
A: Yes! Virtual swaps work well for books, digital items, or small goods that can be mailed. Use video conferencing to show items, create a shared document with photos and descriptions, and arrange shipping between participants. Consider limiting it to local participants to minimize shipping costs.
A: Be clear about quality standards in your invitation. Have a designated “inspection area” where you or a helper can discreetly remove unsuitable items. Return these items to the owner privately or offer to help them donate elsewhere.
My name is Nick Gray. I wrote a book called The 2-Hour Cocktail Party that teaches you how to have a successful party, regardless of whether it’s your first or hundredth time hosting. I’m really proud of it.
When is your party? Send me an email and I will give you some bonus tips, including a pre-party checklist that you can print out. Plus, I’ll answer any questions you have, free of charge. I love talking about parties, and I’m on a mission to help 500 people host their first party.
Nick Gray is the author of The 2-Hour Cocktail Party. He’s been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and in a popular TEDx talk. He sold his last company Museum Hack in 2019. Today he’s an expert on networking events, small parties, and creating relationships. Read more about Nick Gray here.
Look at the reviews: 500+ people can't be wrong. This is my book that I've worked on for the past 5 years and hosted hundreds of events with. It is the single-best resource that is PACKED with tactical tips and the exact scripts I use.
Third party research data is any data that has been created by other researchers or by external agents, for example: Census data created by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. This data may be sourced directly from the creator in raw formats or from other sources such as journal articles, books, blogs or websites.
Political parties address the public through multiple communication channels simultaneously, but this is not reflected in contemporary research. It is largely unclear how party competition plays out across different communication channels and whether issue salience strategies depend on the channel used. In order to answer this question, this article trains a state-of-the-art language model (BERT) on labelled manifestos and applies it for cross-domain topic classification of press releases, parliamentary speeches and tweets from parties and individual party members in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. The results show that certain channel characteristics influence parties’ issue salience. The extent to which a party addresses its issue preferences (ideal agenda) is moderated by the degree of centralised communication (party vs. individuals) and the presence or absence of a pre-given agenda, whereas a channel’s primary audience (direct vs. mediated channel) plays a much smaller role than expected. These findings illustrate the complexity of party competition in contemporary multi-channel and hybrid media environments.
What political parties talk about is a central question in political science. Which issues are discussed defines the locus of political conflict (e.g. Green-Pedersen and Walgrave Citation2014), influences voting decisions (e.g. Alvarez and Nagler Citation1995) and shapes public discourse as well as dynamics of party competition (e.g. Green-Pedersen Citation2007). A large body of research examines political parties’ issue salience strategies and the effects of such strategies on how (representative) democracies function. Existing studies cover several different party communication channels, such as manifestos (e.g. Green-Pedersen Citation2007; Guinaudeau and Persico Citation2014), press releases (e.g. Gessler and Hunger Citation2022; Hopmann et al. Citation2012), parliamentary speeches (e.g. Debus and Tosun Citation2021; Quinn et al. Citation2010) or social media (e.g. Barberá et al. Citation2019; Gilardi, Gessler, et al. Citation2022).
These studies offer multiple valuable insights, but one crucial aspect has largely not yet been reflected. Political communication is a rapidly changing field with new (digital) channels developing constantly. Thus, dynamics of political communication and party competition are no longer restricted to particular channels. Political actors use the ever-growing number of channels to communicate policies and connect with different audiences and social groups. Hence, party competition takes place within and (potentially) across multiple venues simultaneously, with potential implications for public discourse, voting behaviour and democratic representation. Most existing research, however, exclusively studies one particular communication channel in isolation. Comparative research is rare and limited to specific (short) time periods, such as during election campaigns (Elmelund-Præstekær Citation2011; Green and Hobolt Citation2008; Norris et al. Citation1999; Tresch et al. Citation2018). It remains largely unclear to what extent and – most importantly – why parties adapt their behaviour according to different communication channels. Do parties’ issue salience strategies change depending on the channel used? If so, why?
Existing comparative research does offer some insights, but significant gaps remain. While Norris et al. (Citation1999), Elmelund-Præstekær (Citation2011) and Tresch et al. (Citation2018) find differences in issue salience across multiple channels, this is not the case for Green and Hobolt (Citation2008). Crucially, we still lack a coherent theoretical framework to detect the precise factors that influence parties’ issue salience strategies in different channels (Elmelund-Præstekær Citation2011). Grasping how parties use different channels is key to understanding the dynamics of party competition in the rapidly changing political communication environment of contemporary democracies.
Party Strippers ScottsdaleThis article contributes to the literature by studying the extent to which parties’ issue salience changes depending on the communication channel and why. I argue that issue salience is influenced by the characteristics of communication channels. More specifically, depending on the channel, parties focus on their issue preferences (ideal agenda) to different degrees. Three factors should be important.
First, parties reach different audiences through various communication channels. While mediated channels are primarily aimed at journalists (e.g. press releases), others allow parties to connect directly with the public (e.g. social media). Second, party communication can be centralised in the hands of the party leadership and central office (e.g. official party press releases or social media posts from party accounts) or decentralised (e.g. social media posts from individual party members). Third, communication in some channels is structured by some sort of pre-given structure or agenda (e.g. legislative agenda). Therefore, I differentiate pre-structured (e.g. parliamentary speeches) and non-pre-structured communication channels (e.g. tweets, press releases). I expect these three factors to moderate the influence of party preferences on issue salience in the respective communication channels.
Methodologically, I use an advanced text-as-data technique to analyse a broad range of texts produced by political parties. I train a transformer-based model (BERT) on labelled manifestos and apply it cross-domain to classify press releases, parliamentary speeches and tweets from parties and individual party members into issue categories. The study covers the cases of Austria, Germany and Switzerland between January 2019 and September 2021. Overall, the data set consists of more than 41,000 parliamentary speeches and 34,000 press releases, nearly 72,000 tweets from party accounts and more than 420,000 tweets from individual party members.
The empirical results show that political parties’ issue salience is influenced by the communication channel. I observe different issue agendas in each examined channel and find evidence that salience is moderated by specific channel characteristics. Party preferences have a greater influence on issue salience in centralised communication channels, but play a smaller role in pre-structured channels. Both observations follow the theoretical expectations. This is, however, not the case for mediated vs. direct channels; here, the results deliver no statistically significant difference.
These findings have several implications and underscore the importance of studying different sources of party communication. First of all, this article shows that a single, unified political agenda does not exist. Political parties send different policy signals in different venues. This is driven by the nature and characteristics of communication channels. Furthermore, dynamics and patterns of party competition – such as the responsiveness to public opinion or the level of issue engagement between parties – may therefore also shift depending on the channel. This can result in different public perceptions of the parties and the competition between the parties. Interestingly, however, parties do not appear to adapt their communication significantly when the channel’s audience consists primarily of journalists. At first glance, this is a surprising and counterintuitive finding, but it actually fits hybrid media system theory. In hybrid media environments, journalists increasingly make use of alternative sources of information (e.g. social media) to learn about political processes (Chadwick Citation2017). Political actors, in turn, adapt their behaviour to this development and also address journalists in direct channels, such as on X, formerly Twitter. This modern combination of multi-channel and hybrid media environment, which simultaneously leads to a segregation and blurring of audiences, helps to explain why parties do not change their issue salience strategies considerably between mediated and direct channels.
In the following, I will lay out the theoretical framework that captures the factors influencing party issue salience in different communication channels. Then, I will describe the data set and text-as-data approach used to study issue communication in diverse types of text. Finally, I will present the results and conclude with reflections on the broader implications of the findings.
Political actors are subject to multiple sources of influence when it comes to communication strategies. For studying parties’ issue salience across different communication channels, two factors identified by Green-Pedersen and Walgrave (Citation2014) are especially relevant: preferences and institutions.
First, political actors have certain preferences. In the case of parties – the unit of analysis in this article – issue preferences mainly stem from ideological and strategic sources. On the one hand, parties have certain issues that are closely connected to their ideology. The issue of the environment is, for example, at the core of Green party ideology, while Social Democratic parties have a strong ideological interest in labour and welfare state issues. Thus, parties have ideologically driven issue preferences. On the other hand, party preferences also result from strategic considerations related to issue ownership. Issue ownership theory suggests that parties ‘own’ certain issues, either because they are associated with the issue by the public or are regarded as the most competent on it (Walgrave et al. Citation2012). If the public sees a particular party as ‘better able’ to handle a specific issue than other parties, that party has ownership of that issue (Petrocik Citation1996). Thus, issue ownership scholars argue that ‘owning’ an issue brings advantages in party competition.
Parties therefore try to raise the salience of issues ideologically or strategically important to them, while avoiding a direct issue-conflict with other parties (Budge Citation2015; Budge and Farlie Citation1983). This leads to a competition over the political agenda (Carmines and Stimson Citation1993; Green-Pedersen Citation2007). Based on such ideological and strategic preferences, parties develop a so-called ideal agenda and try to push it in the political debate. The ideal agenda reflects the importance of individual issues to a party and is best reflected in party manifestos (Budge et al. Citation1987; Norris et al. Citation1999).
Second, political actors operate within various institutions, whose rules shape the amount of attention the actors can pay to an issue (Green-Pedersen and Walgrave Citation2014). Hence, institutions can be interpreted as structures, which influence party behaviour in issue communication. Institutions take multiple forms, and the definition of what constitutes an institution is strongly contested. One of the most influential conceptualisations argues that institutions consist of formal as well as informal rules, ranging from constitutional orders to simple conventions (Hall and Taylor Citation1996). Following from this definition, many different venues where political processes take place can be described as institutions. This also applies to political parties’ communication channels. These are venues wherein or instruments with which political parties and their members themselves communicate and discuss policies. I understand all channels that shape the public profile of parties, ranging from press releases published by central offices to parliamentary speeches and social media posts by individual party members, as party communication channels.
While research has long focused on manifestos and press releases, recent work also points out and acknowledges the importance of other communication sources. For example, interest in social media is growing, specifically how both parties and individual politicians use it, how it transforms the relationship between parties and their members (e.g. MPs) as well as how it affects agenda setting dynamics (e.g. Gilardi, Gessler, et al. Citation2022; Peeters et al. Citation2019; Sältzer Citation2022; Silva and Proksch Citation2022). Furthermore, an increasing number of studies also finds that parliamentary speeches are another crucial avenue for parties and their MPs to send policy signals (e.g. Debus and Tosun Citation2021; Ivanusch Citation2023; Proksch and Slapin Citation2015). These studies show that several communication channels have become important tools for parties when it comes to issue communication. However, the different channels also possess distinguishing characteristics, rules and conventions that potentially influence political parties’ communication profiles (e.g. Dalmus et al. Citation2017; Elmelund-Præstekær Citation2011; Tresch et al. Citation2018). Thus, different communication channels can be viewed as institutions that create a structure governing the issue communication of parties and their members. I therefore expect party issue salience to be influenced by the communication channel and its characteristics.
As mentioned above, parties usually aim to communicate their issue preferences, i.e. ideal agenda. However, communication channels and their characteristics provide structures that should moderate the amount political parties focus on issue preferences. What are these channel characteristics and how do the various channels influence party behaviour?
Two relevant characteristics can be identified in the literature, namely the type of audience and the degree of control a party can exert over a given channel (Dalmus et al. Citation2017; Elmelund-Præstekær Citation2011). These theoretical considerations offer a strong foundation. Some adaptations are, however, needed. The framework set forth in the following differentiates three characteristics and postulates corresponding hypotheses (H1–H3). Figure 1 illustrates these hypotheses graphically.
The first hypothesis relates to the differing audiences addressed by each communication channel. Certain channels allow parties or individual politicians to address the public and their followers directly, especially social media (Peeters et al. Citation2019; Popa et al. Citation2020). In such direct channels, parties can act (relatively) freely and I therefore expect them to communicate strongly according to their issue preferences. In contrast, press releases are a mediated communication channel. They are primarily aimed at journalists and rarely reach the broader public directly (Dalmus et al. Citation2017). Therefore, parties have to consider the needs and interests of journalists in press releases. This applies not only to formal criteria but also to the selection of issues addressed within a press release. Journalists are, for example, strongly interested in issues that are already salient in the media and among other important actors. In contrast, issues ‘owned’ by a party do not have a high news value (Dalmus et al. Citation2017; Meyer et al. Citation2020). Hence, I hypothesise that parties do not focus solely on their issue preferences but on a broader set of issues in mediated communication channels in order to meet the interests and needs of journalists.
The second hypothesis is based upon communication channels varying in the degree of centralisation. In centralised channels, messages are sent by the party leadership or by the central office or at least have to pass through one or both of them. Here, the central and national organisation unit – the party in central office (Katz and Mair Citation1995) – has tight control over issue communication. In other channels this is not the case as individual party members communicate themselves. Examples of such decentralised communication channels include social media accounts of individual politicians. The degree of centralisation thereby has implications for a party’s issue communication on the whole as well as for its public profile, leading to an increasing research interest, particularly since the advent of social media. Therefore, the actual influence of centralised and decentralised communication channels on the profile of a party and its issue agenda is an important topic.
According to Silva and Proksch (Citation2022), communication by individual party members (i.e. decentralised communication) may serve two purposes. On the one hand, decentralised communication can amplify central party messages, since individual politicians (particularly in systems with strong parties) have strong incentives to follow the party line (e.g. Kam Citation2009; Sieberer Citation2006) and parties simultaneously try to enforce unity (e.g. Proksch and Slapin Citation2015). On the other hand, decentralised communication can serve as a substitute for central party communication channels and represent an avenue to send a variety of policy signals (Silva and Proksch Citation2022).