Articles Facebook as a 'trusted space of everyday communication' - Parties, citizens and direct representation (original) (raw)
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This study identifies the various communication tools and content styles political parties use to reach their Facebook constituency, examines the degree to which they are used, and evaluates the effectiveness of their engagement. Three means of analysis are used: number and frequency of posts by the party, types of posts being made, and responses to the posts by the public. This work thus provides a baseline for discussion on the question of how political parties can and have capitalized on online social media networks in order to effect political engagement, participation, and mobilization.
Political conversations on Facebook – the participation of politicians and citizens
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Political conversations are according to theories on deliberative democracy essential to well-functioning democracies. Traditionally, these conversations have taken place in face-to-face settings, for example, in party meetings and town meetings. However, social media such as Facebook and Twitter offer new possibilities for online political conversations between citizens and politicians. This article examines the presence on Facebook and Twitter of Members of the Danish National Parliament, the Folketing, and focusses on a quantitative mapping of the political conversation activities taking place in the threads following Facebook posts from Danish Members of Parliament (MPs). The article shows that, in comparison with previous findings from other countries, Danish MPs have a relatively high degree of engagement in political conversations with citizens on Facebook – and that a large number of citizens follow MPs, read posts from the MPs and discuss politics with them and other citize...
The Use of Facebook in National Election Campaigns: Politics as Usual
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The uptake of online media in election campaigning is leading to speculations about the transformation of politics and cyber-democracy. Politicians running for seats in Parliament are increasingly using online media to disseminate information to potential voters and building dynamic, online communities. Drawing on an online survey of the Facebook networks of the two top candidates running for seats in the 2007 Danish Parliament election, this study suggests that the online sphere is primarily populated by users who already know the candidates through the traditional channels of party organizations, and that they do not expect to influence the policy of their candidates. Instead, users view Facebook mainly as an information channel and as a means to gain social prestige.
While a comparably large amount of research has looked into the uses of Twitter at the hands of politicians, relatively little work has been done how Facebook is being used in this regard. The current paper expands our insights into the uses of social media by politicians by presenting a study of party leader’s uses of Facebook during the 2013 Norwegian election campaign. The paper focuses on two overarching areas: gauging the different themes brought up the party leaders in their posts, and the types of feedback (understood here as likes, comments and shares) that these activities appear to result in. Results indicate that the types of content least provided by the politicians – acknowledging the support of others or criticizing the actions by political peers or media actors – emerges as the most popular in this regard. Results further show that the most common type of feedback is likes – a finding that suggesting that a reassessment of the viral qualities of Facebook for purposes like these is necessary.
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Given the importance of issue competition in a West European context and the growing use of Facebook in elections, this paper studies how politicians use Facebook to shape the campaign agenda. We analyze the issues addressed in 6388 Facebook posts by candidates in the Danish 2011 parliamentary election. A limited share of Facebook updates is dedicated to issues. The Facebook agenda did not respond to standings in the polls, nor to the media agenda or public agenda. Comparing issue engagement of new candidates and re-running candidates we find that the Facebook campaign agenda is not simply politics as usual.!
CM-časopis za upravljanje komuniciranjem, 2012
This study examines the use of Facebook in political communication during the 2009 European Parliament elections campaign. Its goal is to explore the possibilities of the European Parliament communication strategy on Facebook as well as the interaction and participation of its online audiences. The analysis has discovered new concepts significant for the field of online political advertising, the specific campaign construction with its key themes and the particular form of interaction. The original contribution of this paper is seen in its efforts to reveal the campaign of the European Parliament on Facebook, which was not previously studied.
Political Social Media sites as Public Sphere: A Case Study of the Norwegian Labour Party
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Political interest and voter turnout is in steady decline. In an attempt to renew interest for political matters, political parties and governments have attempted to create new digital meeting places, with the hope that social media can contribute to renew the public sphere and thereby increase political awareness in the population. Communicating in new media demands adaption to the culture of the new medium, and the networked nature of the Internet poses challenges to old ways of thinking as we can no longer talk about one public sphere but rather a networked public sphere consisting of a multitude of discussion spaces. In this article, we contribute to the understanding of the networked public sphere and online political communication through a case study of MyLaborParty.no, a social network run by a Norwegian political party. Our findings indicate that political parties can create a thriving part of the networked public sphere, as long as they invite opposing voices to the discussion, communicate using the genres which facilitate discussion and have users or moderators who help spread ideas between discussion spaces.
ePart conference/Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series, 2014
Online campaigning has been on the agenda of Norwegian political parties since 2001. In 2007, there were some early attempts at online campaigning through social networking systems (SNS) during the municipal elections. 2009 was the first time SNS’ were used for campaigning on a national level by all the political parties represented in parliament. This study follows up an earlier study of the 2009 election by examining the communication genres being used by Norwegian political parties in the 2013 parliamentary election. The 2009 study concluded that a genre system for online campaigning was emerging in SNS’, and presented an overview of this system. This paper shows that the genre system is slowly moving towards an established system, and that while still not fully sorted out, previous issues, such as a lack of two-way communication, is being addressed by the parties. The study concludes that campaigning in SNS’ is slowly moving more and more towards the objectives of politics 2.0.
Key to the idea of a democratic public sphere has always been the ongoing conversations among citizens and between citizens and politicians (Koch, Mansbridge, Habermas, etc.). The conversations between politicians and citizens in the Danish political system have traditionally taken place at political party meetings and at public meetings and hearings. However, the rise of new social media like Facebook provides new, interesting platforms for these conversations—and many opinion makers and scholars have high expectations for their democratic potential. This chapter examines what happens when traditional democratic conversations between citizens and politicians are moved away from the old face-to-face meetings and into Facebook. Through interviews with Danish Members of Parliament (MPs), the paper examines the advantages and disadvantages of online democratic conversations on Facebook as experienced by the MPs. The paper builds on a former quantitative mapping of the political conversation activities between Danish MPs and their followers on Facebook (Sørensen 2016).