Resilient anachronisms

Before email and messaging, we had regular mail and envelopes, which candidates for the national or European Parliament would send off to voters, only so they could form huge piles in the entrances to our apartment buildings. What was the point of this enormous profusion of advertising material, which came in glossy or regular form depending on the budget of each given campaign, with photographs of retouched, smiling candidates? Did it somehow help acquaint the public with the candidates, did it affect how people voted, did it create some form of impression that had an impact? Over time, it became a tactic that was dismissed as mundane, as a waste of resources and a blight on the environment, with little, if any, political purpose.

The new century brought the technological revolution and, with it, traditional forms of communication were swept aside; not so traditional...