Face to face(book): Social media, political campaigning and the unbearable lightness of being there (original) (raw)
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Facing up to Facebook: politicians, publics and the social media(ted) turn in New Zealand
Media, Culture & Society, 2014
Social media have an increasingly important place in the lives of citizens, and their potential to expand the reach of communication messages beyond individual networks is attractive to those looking to maximise message efficiency. The influence of Facebook in Obama's 2008 campaign success galvanised many politicians into taking it seriously as a campaign tool. Our study explored the Facebook wall posts (1148 in total) of New Zealand Members of Parliament (MPs) leading up to the 2011 general election to determine posting behaviours and differences. Among other things, we found that women posted more frequently than men and that Labour MPs posted more than their National counterparts. Additionally, most politicians do not invite dialogue with readers of their posts, rarely get involved in comment threads and mostly take a monologic approach, using Facebook as a way of broadcasting information rather than as a medium enabling two-way flow. In other words, same old, same old.
ABSTRACT Political parties and candidates’ adoption of social media technologies engender both optimism and concern about voter engagement in Australia. On one hand, scholars have expressed hope for a more democratic politics freed from traditional media’s gatekeeping role; on the other, researchers find political communication through social media generally fails to transcend politics 1.0. Following international studies, Australian scholarship focused on candidates’ use of Twitter and Facebook for political campaigning has identified a largely unfulfilled potential for a more participatory public sphere. This article contributes original research to this question of online political engagement by examining Victorian state politicians’ social media use during both non-election and election periods. We undertook quantitative content analysis and social networks analysis of politicians’ Facebook and Twitter use in 2014. We find state politicians like their federal and other state counterparts are rapidly adopting digital technologies, particularly Facebook, for political communication. Yet, despite the significant increased social media use by Victorian politicians for public communication purposes, we find that similar to other recent Australian studies the extent of political engagement between politicians and voters on these social media sites remains low. We identify two related factors that impede political engagement in the digital sphere, they are citizens’ negative comments and politicians’ long-standing desire to control the political message.
Facebooking a different campaign beat: party leaders, the press and public engagement
Media, Culture & Society
Social media are increasingly entrenched in politicians’ campaigning. Yet even as they become more ubiquitous, evidence suggests widely used platforms normalize rather than equalize the existing power dynamics of the political landscape. Our study of New Zealand’s 2017 general election uses a mixed-method approach including analysis of five Party Leaders’ (PLs) public Facebook wall posts, campaign coverage in four newspapers and interviews with Party workers and MPs. Our findings show PLs seldom interact with citizens and mostly use posts to promote campaign information. Citizens are more likely to ‘like’ a PL’s post than share or comment and there are important divergences between Party and media agendas. These findings demonstrate not only the importance of social media for Parties’ attempts to control messaging and disrupt journalistic interference, but also highlight that neither Parties nor citizens seem much invested in dialogue. However, understanding which posts excite citiz...
Digital Dialogue? Australian Politicians' use of the Social Network Tool Twitter
Australian Journal of Political Science, 2010
The recent emergence of online social media has had a significant effect on the contemporary political landscape, yet our understanding of this remains less than complete. This article adds to current understanding of the online engagement between politicians and the public by presenting the first quantitative analysis of the utilisation of the social network tool Twitter by Australian politicians. The analysis suggests that politicians are attempting to use Twitter for political engagement, though some are more successful in this than others. Politicians are noisier than Australians in general on Twitter, though this is due more to broadcasting than conversing. Those who use Twitter to converse appear to gain more political benefit from the platform than others. Though politicians cluster by party, a relatively 'small world' network is evident in the Australian political discussion on Twitter.
2013
Politicians across Western democracies are increasingly adopting and experimenting with Twitter, particularly during election time. The purpose of this article is to investigate how candidates are using it during an election campaign. The aim is to create a typology of the various ways in which candidates behaved on Twitter. Our research, which included a content analysis of tweets (n = 26,282) from all twittering Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat candidates (n = 416) during the 2010 UK General Election campaign, focused on four aspects of tweets: type, interaction, function and topic. By examining candidates' twittering behaviour, the authors show that British politicians mainly used Twitter as a unidirectional form of communication. However, there were a group of candidates who used it to interact with voters by, for example, mobilizing, helping and consulting them, thus tapping into the potential Twitter offers for facilitating a closer relationship with citizens.
Politicians and Political Parties’ Use of Social Media in-between Elections
Journal of Applied Journalism & Media Studies, 2020
Digital transformation changes the relationship between citizens and politics. The observation of this nexus is highly relevant for representative democracy. After the successful 2008 Obama campaign, a vast body of research that explores how and why politicians use social media has emerged. However, we still know very little about how social media are being adopted and used in-between elections, and still less yet about what this means for political representation. Therefore, this Special Issue brings together innovative research that focuses on how the use of social media is impacting upon the relationship between politicians and political parties, and citizens. First, we discuss some pros and cons of this transformation in the context of the relevant literature and, especially, in relation to Stephen Coleman’s concept of ‘direct representation”. Finally, we discuss the findings and merits of the contributions and what the issue adds to our understanding of the phenomenon, to the state of research.
Research on political communication between MPs and the public has focused on the role, activities and perceptions of the members of parliament (MPs) themselves. However, the authors' prior research demonstrated that in fact social media necessitate a new prism through which to study such communication. The contribution of the present study is to look at this relationship through the heretofore under-researched prism of those who in fact are doing much of the actual communication (at least in Israel): the parliamentary assistants (PAs). Whereas other studies tend to focus on the communicative contents, the present research deals mainly with the behindthe-scenes processes that produce such content.
Silent Partners: How Politicians' Facebook Communication with Constituents is Mediated
Politics & Policy, 2020
Theoretical research on political communication between Members of Parliament (MPs) and the public has focused on the role, activities, and perceptions of the MPs themselves without noting the existence of an intermediate layer: Parliamentary Assistants (PAs). This study examines the presence of PAs in the process of MPs' interactions with the public, and their PA's role in this process. The study investigates the perception that social media involves direct contact between the public and parliamentarians, raising questions regarding how communication is conducted between these two actors in political representation. The study found that PAs' social media skills and knowledge are hardly considered in the hiring process, although they play a central role in the MPs' social media connection with the public. Subjective variables generate differences in PA level of involvement operating MP social media channels. Based on these findings, a typology of PA involvement in MP social media operation is offered.
Tweeting MPs: Digital Engagement between Citizens and Members of Parliament in the UK
ArXiv, 2019
Disengagement and disenchantment with the Parliamentary process is an important concern in today's Western democracies. Members of Parliament (MPs) in the UK are therefore seeking new ways to engage with citizens, including being on digital platforms such as Twitter. In recent years, nearly all (579 out of 650) MPs have created Twitter accounts, and have amassed huge followings comparable to a sizable fraction of the country's population. This paper seeks to shed light on this phenomenon by examining the volume and nature of the interaction between MPs and citizens. We find that although there is an information overload on MPs, attention on individual MPs is focused during small time windows when something topical may be happening relating to them. MPs manage their interaction strategically, replying selectively to UK-based citizens and thereby serving in their role as elected representatives, and using retweets to spread their party's message. Most promisingly, we find ...
Social Media in Political Campaigning Around the World: Theoretical and Methodological Challenges
Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly
The impact of social media in political campaigning around the world is undeniable. Latest statistics show that close to three fourth of U.S. adults use social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, with social network use becoming almost ubiquitous among young adults, according to recent data from the Pew Research Center (2018). Globally, an estimated 2.62 billion people use social networks on a daily basis in 2018, with that number projected to reach 2.77 billion by 2019 (Statista, 2018). With their tremendous growth, social media have become an indispensable part of modern political campaigning, both in the United States and internationally. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit have changed how political campaigns are run; how politicians and the public access and share political information; and the way we learn about politics, form opinions and attitudes, and ultimately engage in or disengage from the political process. While social media have clearly affected our understanding of political communication and its effects on the public, it is difficult to see clear monolithic effects. A 2009 meta-analysis showed that Internet use in general had positive, although relatively small, effects on different aspects of political engagement (Boulianne, 2009). Similarly, a 2015 meta-analysis demonstrated only limited effects of digital media use on political participation, showing that only half of 170 reported effects from 36 selected studies were statistically significant (Boulianne, 2015). Yet another meta-analysis found generally positive effects of social media on three different dimensions of engagement, namely, social capital, civic engagement, and political participation, when surveying 116 relationships/effects reported in 22 different studies (Skoric, Zhu, Goh, & Pang, 2016). These comprehensive aggregate studies offer evidence that the effects of social media consumption and use are hardly uniform across different contexts and groups. For example, studies with random samples of youth are more likely to identify a significant effect, compared with general population samples (Boulianne, 2015). Also, studies that rely on panel data are twice less likely to find positive and statistically significant relationships between social media use and political participation (Boulianne, 2015). Studies have also noted that the relationship between Internet use and political engagement varies depending on type of use. For example, findings by Gil de Zuniga, Bachmann, Hsu, and Brundidge (2013) suggest that only expressive 770437J MQXXX10.