How Technology Shapes Campaign Strategy and Tactics
This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.
In this session, fellowship candidates will learn how political campaigns actually work and explore the different roles technology can play at each stage of the campaigning process.
We will begin with a worked example from a real campaign, tracing how an initial problem was translated into a specific, time-bound goal; how decision-makers and power structures were identified; and how pressure was applied under tight constraints. Through this example, we will examine how technology was used at different stages of the campaign, particularly in applying pressure and organising the people involved.
Fellowship candidates will then work in small groups on different campaign scenarios. They will practise the core fundamentals of campaign planning and explore how technology can support three distinct stages of campaigning:
Sense-making
Defining realistic campaign goals and identifying who actually holds power and what may influence them.
How can technology support research, power mapping, and modelling decision-making structures?Tactics and pressure
Designing tactics to apply pressure to decision-makers.
How can technology enable new tactics or strengthen existing forms of pressure?Organising people
Planning how to organise people to carry out those tactics.
How can technology reduce friction in coordinating, motivating, and sustaining collective action?
The session emphasises technology as an enabler of political strategy and organisation, rather than a substitute for political judgement.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this session, fellowship candidates will be able to:
Translate broad political problems into specific, actionable campaign goals
Distinguish between values, issues, and goals by identifying concrete decisions, decision-makers, and timeframes.Identify where power sits in real political systems
Analyse who formally and informally influences decisions, and explain why some actors matter more than others.Design a minimum viable campaign intervention
Select and justify tactics that apply pressure to decision-makers, recognising trade-offs between different approaches and outcomes.Assess how and when technology supports campaigning
Evaluate the role of technology across three campaign functions: sense-making, tactics and pressure and organising, including where technology reduces friction and where it can create power.