Newpolcom's Professor Andrew Chadwick and Dr Cristian Vaccari are speaking at next week's CyberParty conference at King's College London.

Hosted by the new King's Centre for Digital Culture (Director: Dr Paolo Gerbaudo), the conference will examine the significance of the new party formations whose organizational infrastructure and political identity is heavily shaped by their use of digital communication technologies, such as Podemos, the 5 Star Movement, Syriza, and the Pirate Parties in Germany, Sweden, and Iceland. The event will also examine recent party change in which digital media have played an important role, such as Jeremy Corbyn's rise to become leader of the British Labour Party, and Bernie Sanders' U.S. primary campaign.

Andrew will be sharing ideas and findings from the forthcoming special issue of the International Journal of Press/Politics on "Digital Media, Power, and Democracy in Parties and Election Campaigns" that he co-edited with Professor Jennifer Stromer-Galley. The special issue features an article by the editors and six papers examining digital media and party change in a wide range of countries.

Andrew's talk, which features in the Opening Plenary, is entitled "They’re Parties, But Not as We Have Known Them: Digital Media and (Dis)organizational Renewal."

Cristian's talk, in the session on Digital Demands: Policies and Cleavages, is entitled "Old, New, or Just Different? An Overview of Cyberparty Supporters."

More information on the conference can be found at the Centre for Digital Culture website.