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Party-citizen online challenges: Portuguese parties’ Facebook usage and audience engagement
... On the one hand, this purpose aligns with the fact that, in Portugal, social media is a central source of information for young people (Newman et al., 2023), including political information (Costa, 2022). On the other hand, the assumed predominance of information dissemination (unidirectional) over dialogue (bidirectional) corroborates the use of Web 2.0 platforms with a 1.0 approach, previously identified in political communication by Portuguese parties and youth wings (García-Orosa, 2022;Machado et al., 2023;Santos & Bicho, 2016;Serra-Silva et al., 2018). ...
Research on the relationship between youth, politics, and social media often overlooks the role and views of party youth wings. In this study, we seek to fill this gap by understanding (1) the objectives guiding the political communication of party youth wings on social media and (2) the opportunities and challenges they identify in the process. We do so by conducting semi-structured interviews with representatives of youth wings and informal youth groups from Portuguese political parties. Information emerges as the primary communicational objective of youth wings, who do not consider social media an ideal space for political dialogue. Although social media is the main communication channel with young people, offering more reach, flexibility, and feedback opportunities, several challenges limit the effectiveness of communication: resources, algorithms, audience fragmentation, selection effects, simplification of complexity, and the irreplaceability of face-to-face contact. The implications of these results are discussed.
... (Haßler et al., 2021). Já os trabalhos sobre o contexto português costumam focar em outros media sociais, como Facebook (Rosa et al., 2022;Serra-Silva et al., 2018;Baptista & Gradim, 2020) e Twitter (Spencer, 2019 Verificaremos quais e como os atores políticos, sejam institucionais, não institucionais ou individuais (Rosa et al., 2022), atuaram no Instagram durante as eleições. Por outro lado, também é relevante para esta pesquisa compreender quais atores políticos foram mais influentes e que tipos de imagens foram postadas. ...
O Instagram desempenha papel fundamental nas campanhas eleitorais contemporâneas, mas ainda é pouco estudado dentro do contexto português. Este artigo analisará as apropriações da hashtag #legislativas2022 realizadas por atores políticos no Instagram durante as Eleições de 2022 em Portugal. Para tal, levaremos em conta o engajamento dos utilizadores, os agrupamentos e redes das hashtags utilizadas, bem como a análise computacional de imagens com o auxílio da Google Vision API, tendo em vista os rótulos e as entidades web. Os resultados da análise dos utilizadores apontam para a prevalência de perfis dos partidos políticos, da grande imprensa e de líderes partidários no debate público; as imagens representam maioritariamente a cobertura dos eventos políticos e o dia a dia de campanha; as hashtags sugerem a força dos perfis de células regionais dos partidos e de apoiadores. Por último, os resultados apontam o caráter distintivo da campanha eleitoral do partido Chega, que, diferentemente das demais, buscou explicitamente identificar a quem ou a que se contrapunha, sendo identificada com o populismo de direita.
There is widespread acknowledgement that social media platforms are strategically used by organizations to communicate and even engage with their stakeholders. It is also recognized in political communication studies that social networks can promote interaction between political actors and citizens, encouraging participation and direct communication. Introducing the dialogic communication principles into the analysis of political parties’ interactive behavior on social networks, this paper analyzes the level of interactivity between the public and the political parties that participated in the 2019 general elections in Portugal as they occurred on their institutional Facebook pages during the election campaign. The findings of the analysis, carried out based on an original set of metrics, conclude that the level of engagement and interactivity of political parties with their followers on Facebook is low or even null. This result is consistent with our first hypothesis of the existence of the so-called “social media paradox”, mirroring the interaction challenges and limitations in online political communication. Our second hypothesis, that the new or fringe parties show a higher level of interactivity with their Facebook followers, was confirmed. Another important finding of this study deepens the “paradoxical” behavior online: while social networking is mainly oriented to public engagement, political parties privilege the private communication options of Facebook that tend to favor a more deep and real dialogic exchange between political parties and citizens.
Despite the low mobilization of citizenry, the lack of any strong electoral competition and consequently the expected re-election of the incumbent, the 2021 Portuguese Presidential elections gained particular interest for two main reasons. Firstly, this election took place in extraordinary circumstances amid the Covid-19 pandemic. At the time, Portugal was experiencing the world’s highest number of new cases and deaths per million. Secondly, this election was noted for the support obtained by the far-right candidate, unprecedented in national elections in Portugal. Thus, this article attempts to provide an overview of the main features of the presidential elections of 2021 in Portugal, namely the measures introduced to mitigate the threat of the pandemic and assure voters’ safety, the impact of the pandemic and the lockdown in the electoral campaign, the electoral results, and the rise of the radical right in Portugal and its implications.
As redes sociais trouxeram novas e entusiasmantes possibilidades para a comunicação política, tendo o potencial de aproximar eleitos e eleitores. Contudo, não é consensual se as plataformas digitais vieram revolucionar a forma de fazer campanha eleitoral ou se representam uma extensão dos padrões da campanha offline. Este artigo procura contribuir para este debate, tendo como objeto de estudo um tipo de estrutura política e uma rede social que têm sido subexploradas no âmbito da comunicação política: as juventudes partidárias e o Instagram. É feita uma análise de conteúdo à atividade das alas jovens de partidos portugueses nesta rede social em dois momentos eleitorais –as Eleições Autárquicas de 2021 e as Eleições Legislativas de 2022– num universo de seiscentas e oitenta e uma publicações. Contrariamente ao esperado, os resultados revelam que as juventudes partidárias comunicam sobretudo numa lógica de normalização, não aproveitando as potencialidades das plataformas digitais para a comunicação política.
The recent economic crisis has created momentum for party system change in most European democracies. While Portugal has shown more predictable patterns of interparty competition, since the 2015 elections it has experienced incremental changes in the electoral, parliamentary and governing arenas. This study explores several dimensions of the Portuguese party system (including volatility, alternation in government and innovation) from a longitudinal perspective, and provides new explanations for its development. Focusing on the post-bailout period, it argues that abstention and party strategy go a long way to explaining the patterns of continuity and (marginal) change in the Portuguese party system.
[...] this study resorts to a social media metrics set to assess how Portuguese political parties use social media and how people engage with parties online. We analyse parties’ fb usage across a time span of 7 years (2010-2017) and examine how users’ engage with parties online.
Portugal has often been somewhat marginalized in the study of parties’
online communication strategies. The increase in ict usage in the country
(internet diffusion increased by 32.3% between 2005 and 2016), along with the
current presence of all parties in one or more social media platforms, makes it
a worthy case study. While plenty of research has provided important insights
on the use of the Internet by political parties during election campaigns,
effectively providing us with periodically skewed data, recent research has
been focusing on “permanent” (Jackson and Lilleker 2004) or “postmodern”
(Vaccari 2008) campaigning – indicating the need to look at these activities
beyond election season. As we consider a time span of 7 years (2010-2017),
this study contributes to this recent and growing literature by approaching the ways in which Portuguese parties use fb as a communication tool and how the public responds to this new way of political communication. This chapter contributes to the volume’s purpose of addressing the contemporary
challenges to citizenship by looking at the current relationship between parties
and citizens in the digital context, a space where political action and active citizenship is increasingly undertaken. The chapter is structured in three main sections. The first reviews the literature on how political parties use ICT and social media. The second outlines the methodological phases of the empirical
study. Finally, the third presents the findings and discussion.
[...] this study resorts to a social media metrics set to assess how Portuguese political parties use social media and how people engage with parties online. We analyse parties’ fb usage across a time span of 7 years (2010-2017) and examine how users’ engage with parties online.
Portugal has often been somewhat marginalized in the study of parties’
online communication strategies. The increase in ict usage in the country
(internet diffusion increased by 32.3% between 2005 and 2016), along with the
current presence of all parties in one or more social media platforms, makes it
a worthy case study. While plenty of research has provided important insights
on the use of the Internet by political parties during election campaigns,
effectively providing us with periodically skewed data, recent research has
been focusing on “permanent” (Jackson and Lilleker 2004) or “postmodern”
(Vaccari 2008) campaigning – indicating the need to look at these activities
beyond election season. As we consider a time span of 7 years (2010-2017),
this study contributes to this recent and growing literature by approaching the ways in which Portuguese parties use fb as a communication tool and how the public responds to this new way of political communication. This chapter contributes to the volume’s purpose of addressing the contemporary
challenges to citizenship by looking at the current relationship between parties
and citizens in the digital context, a space where political action and active citizenship is increasingly undertaken. The chapter is structured in three main sections. The first reviews the literature on how political parties use ICT and social media. The second outlines the methodological phases of the empirical
study. Finally, the third presents the findings and discussion.
The study investigates 25 viral posts during the Hungarian general election campaign in 2014. These are posts whose numbers of shares were much higher than the average shares of their posters’ posts. The study addresses the question of what kind of contents may get viral and how this happens. First, it investigates the most specific and common features of the contents of these posts. Second, the way they are shared and the effects they may evoke within personal networks are examined. Results show the prominence of negativity, undistorted message transmission and a low reactivity level to the shares.
Starting from the contribution to the discussion on a fourth age of political communication, here we argue that, as a consequence of how the Web 2.0 has changed political campaigns, the theoretical time-bound three-phase models of political campaigning must be reconsidered. We propose four ideal campaign types based on their ideal-typical target audience: partisan-, mass-, target group- and individual-centered campaigns. In reality, each campaign combines elements of all types. To examine this mixture empirically, we apply a most similar systems design and investigate five German and six Austrian parties’ use of Facebook in the 2013 national election campaigns. On the basis of face-to-face interviews with the campaign managers and a quantitative content analysis of the respective parties’ Facebook pages, we analyze how parties used Facebook as a campaigning tool to inform, interact with, and mobilize voters, as well as which target audiences they addressed. We find that, although the campaign managers declare Facebook their most important Web 2.0
campaigning tool, the German and Austrian parties did not make use of Facebook’s interactive and mobilizing potential, rather relying on mass-centered information, possibly due to the framework conditions in both countries. Based on our findings, we conclude that the role of context for election campaigning should be discussed more carefully.
The social media are becoming a major channel of online interactive participation, and local governments are seizing this opportunity to enhance citizen engagement in political and social affairs. This article analyses the various forms of social media used – that is, Twitter or Facebook – by citizens in their relations with Spanish local government, to determine which of these achieves the strongest degree of commitment. We also analyse the influence of various factors on this level of commitment. The results obtained show that Facebook is preferred to Twitter as a means of participating in local government issues. Other factors that are relevant to citizen engagement are the level of online transparency, mood, the level of activity in social media and the interactivity offered by the local government website. The findings of this study contribute significantly to understanding how citizen engagement is influenced by the type of social media adopted.
We assess whether and how accidental exposure to political information on social media contributes to citizens’ online political participation in comparative perspective. Based on three online surveys of samples representative of German, Italian, and British Internet users in the aftermath of the 2014 European Parliament elections, we find that accidental exposure to political information on social media is positively and significantly correlated with online participation in all three countries, particularly so in Germany where overall levels of participation were lower. We also find that interest in politics moderates this relationship so that the correlation is stronger among the less interested than among the highly interested. These findings suggest that inadvertent encounters with political content on social media are likely to reduce the gap in online engagement between citizens with high and low interest in politics, potentially broadening the range of voices that make themselves heard.
With the arrival of television, voters began to care not only about political candidates' stances on issues, but also about character, as demonstrated by Kennedy's and Nixon's 1960 debate. In the current qualitative study, we investigate how the technologically savvy Millennials form impressions of candidates when they obtain information through social or nonsocial media. We found that Millennials tend to stumble upon political information rather than seek it out, regardless of social media influence. We also found that social (versus nonsocial) media use did increase citizen expectations of candidates. Whereas both social and nonsocial groups appreciated candidate stance on issues and candidate character, those who were exposed to candidates via social media also sought candidate-to-community connection. Interestingly, the generation that has notoriously less physical community interaction, possibly due to social media, tends to emphasize community involvement when evaluating candidates through social media. This finding supports the view that with new media, public value is defined largely by interactions between senior politicians and the public.
Au XXIe siècle, la jeunesse est très souvent associée à des représentations négatives. Si l’on se fie au discours politique, aux médias et à l’opinion publique au Royaume-Uni et en France, les jeunes constitueraient une génération désœuvrée et dangereuse pour l’ordre social. Or, comme le montre cet ouvrage, le principal enjeu auquel sont confrontés les pouvoirs publics des deux côtés de la Manche concerne le déclin des formes traditionnelles de participation juvénile à la vie politique.
Rassemblant des contributions de sociologues et politistes spécialistes de la jeunesse, ce livre aborde les questions de l'engagement politique, de la citoyenneté et des mutations des politiques de jeunesse. Dans les deux pays, on constate la confrontation de deux principaux types de politiques de jeunesse. D’abord, un volet « répressif » qui fait appel à des dispositifs publics fondés sur la stigmatisation et le contrôle social ; ensuite, un nouveau volet « d’accompagnement » visant à promouvoir la citoyenneté et la participation à la vie publique et à susciter un renouvellement des formes de l’engagement politique. Bien que prometteuse, cette seconde approche n’est pas dénuée de tensions et de contradictions ainsi que le mettent en évidence les travaux ici réunis.
Social media has skyrocketed to popularity in the past few years. The Arab Spring in 2011 as well as the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns have fueled interest in how social media might affect citizens’ participation in civic and political life. In response, researchers have produced 36 studies assessing the relationship between social media use and participation in civic and political life. This manuscript presents the results of a meta-analysis of research on social media use and participation. Overall, the metadata demonstrate a positive relationship between social media use and participation. More than 80% of coefficients are positive. However, questions remain about whether the relationship is causal and transformative. Only half of the coefficients were statistically significant. Studies using panel data are less likely to report positive and statistically significant coefficients between social media use and participation, compared to cross-sectional surveys. The metadata also suggest that social media use has minimal impact on participation in election campaigns.
This article argues that digital media are introducing a new grassroots-based mode of ‘citizen-initiated campaigning’ (CIC) that challenges the dominant professionalized model of campaign management by devolving power over core tasks to the grassroots. After defining the practice through reference to the 2008 campaign of Barack Obama and online parties literature, we devise a measure of CIC that is applied to UK parties in the 2010 election. Our findings show that CIC is emerging outside the U.S. and adoption is associated with major party status, although it may be of particular appeal to political actors facing a resource deficit. The conclusions focus on the implications of CIC for new forms of party membership, indirect voter mobilization and the contextual factors influencing this new model of campaigning.
In one of his last publications, Peter Mair documented how party membership had declined substantially in virtually all European democracies. As his collaborators on this piece, it seems pertinent that we take these findings as a point of departure and discuss what they mean for our understanding of party democracy. After all, the collapse of membership figures calls into question one of the central elements of our conceptualization of representative democracy, namely that it is based on voluntary political participation within political parties. All authoritative typologies of political parties consider the role of members to be one of their defining elements, although the cartel party most clearly envisages the marginalization of party members by professional party politicians. The traditional organizational allies of political parties (e.g. trade unions, organized religion) are subject to similar processes of erosion. In this article, we review the evidence of the social anchorage of political parties and discuss how political parties and party democracy can survive in an age where amateur politicians are becoming an increasingly rare species and parties are being transformed into organizational vehicles for those to whom politics is a profession rather than a vocation.
In this article we propose a concept of network media logic in order to discuss how online social media platforms change political communication without resorting to technological determinism or normalization. We argue that social media platforms operate with a distinctly different logic from that of traditional mass media, though overlapping with it. This is leading to different ways of producing content, distributing information and using media. By discussing the differences between traditional mass media and social media platforms in terms of production, consumption and use, we carve out the central elements of network media logic – that is, the rules/format of communication on social media platforms – and some consequences for political communication.
Scholars disagree about the impact of the Internet on civic and political engagement. Some scholars argue that Internet use will contribute to civic decline, whereas other scholars view the Internet as having a role to play in reinvigorating civic life. This article assesses the hypothesis that Internet use will contribute to declines in civic life. It also assesses whether Internet use has any significant effect on engagement. A meta-analysis approach to current research in this area is used. In total, 38 studies with 166 effects are examined. The meta-data provide strong evidence against the Internet having a negative effect on engagement. However, the meta-data do not establish that Internet use will have a substantial impact on engagement. The effects of Internet use on engagement seem to increase nonmonotonically across time, and the effects are larger when online news is used to measure Internet use, compared to other measures.
Many claims have been made regarding the influence of social media like Facebook on activities undertaken by political actors. While the study of online political communication provides several different perspectives, few studies have attempted to uncover tendencies of so-called permanent campaigning in online environments. The term signifies campaign-like activities at the hands of politicians also during non-election periods and has spawned a number of conceptual discussions. This article presents an exploratory effort, studying traces of permanent campaigning in two similar countries—Norway and Sweden. As the former of these countries underwent a parliamentary election during the studied period, the study provides insights into “the election effect”—heightened levels of online activity among the Norwegian parties and politicians that can perhaps best be understood in relation to an ongoing election.
This publication contains reprint articles for which IEEE does not hold copyright. Full text is not available on IEEE Xplore for these articles.
The focus of this article is on Norwegian political parties' adaption of Web 2.0 before and during the long campaign for the local elections in September 2007. By 2007, most parties had learned to use their Web sites as instruments for professional political marketing. In this process of streamlining, party presence on the Web acquired the characteristics of what is now conceptualized as Web 1.0. This article asks whether the emergence of Web 2.0, with its potential for grassroots participation and networking, as well as multilateral interactivity, was a catalyst of “e-ruptive” change towards greater pluralism or participation. The data indicate that in terms of party competition, Web 2.0 had at best a weak pluralizing effect, as party visibility in Web 2.0 environments roughly reflected party vote share. However, Web 2.0 enhanced participatory democracy by lowering the threshold for the involvement of the party grassroots and other sympathizers.
It is no longer sufficient for a British Member of Parliament to represent a particular party and be in a safe seat to guarantee re-election. Arguably the MP has to prove that they not only represent the party but also the constituency, and increasingly they feel under pressure to prove they take the latter aspect of the job very seriously. Therefore we find them engaging in various activities which can be described as profile building or public relations, activities which we recognize as being more consistent with the PR activities of charities and/or pressure groups. They act as campaigners, building themselves a profile through the local media, they are also increasingly using the Internet to promote themselves, their activities and a number of causes important to the MP and a section of the constituency. PR theory, especially Grunig and Hunt’s continuum and Ferguson’s relationship management theories, help explain the possible motivations for MPs using these various strategies. The question this article asks is whether this is just PR or is there a less cynical motive for this activity. In other words is it simply about vote winning, which clearly is a key aspect, or is there also a desire to increase interaction between the local electorate and their parliamentary representative.
The Front National, a far-Right French political party which had long been ostracized and criticized by the mainstream media, was among the first to adopt a presence on the web as a means to publicize its goals. This article outlines the party’s growth, disaffection with traditional media and its online strategy using discursive analysis of the web site over five years. The article analyzes the internet as a site of cultural negotiation between the national discourse governed by dominant political parties and the more marginalized Front National. France, a centralized government, anxious about the cultural imperialism of English, at first resisted the introduction of the internet, but later promoted it to ensure the presence of French content. The Front National contested the more mainstream notions of French citizenship and nationhood and employed the internet as a catalyst and outlet for its ‘counter-knowledge’.
This article examines the differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 and how these Web strategies are used within a political communication context. The data focus on how political parties (and their leaders) in Britain use Web 2.0 applications. We consider whether the content political elites published in their Web 2.0 applications is shovelware and more appropriate for Web 1.0, or if a genuinely Web 2.0 style of political communication is emerging. We investigate the extent to which there has been a shift in the way British politicians communicate or if caution over co-production, coupled with the demands of electioneering, is restricting the development of interactivity. Our analysis suggests that British political parties have sought to create a “Web 1.5” that offers the advantages of both Web 1.0 and Web 2.0.
The internet was one of the most discussed communication innovations in the French 2007 Presidential and legislative elections. In order to assess the state of online campaigning in France, this article analyzes the characteristics of the websites of 12 presidential candidates and 10 national parties during the campaign. The data reveal that, despite the media hype, online electioneering in France is still at an intermediary stage, especially in terms of participation tools. Significant differences were found among candidates and, especially, parties. The gap between large and small parties is found to be greater than in most of similar country studies, thus providing new evidence against the internet's ability to level the political playing field. Distinctive patterns of online electioneering emerge between conservative and progressive parties and candidates.
With a focus on the Portuguese case, this article shows how MPs express disagreement with their parties in a highly cohesive and party-dominated parliament. We review the features that explain why the Portuguese institutional framework reinforces party control over the parliamentary mandate and discuss the different ways Portuguese MPs express party dissent. In the last section of the article, we analyse data on voting for a period of just over 30 years. Contrary to what the literature tells us, Portuguese MPs have been breaching voting discipline regularly since 1976.
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 parties have not been indifferent to the opportunities offered by the internet-based technologies. Today, political parties use the social media tools to communicate, organize and mobilize. However, few studies focus on the use of social media by the political parties and these studies analyze the use of social media in election campaigns. Therefore, in the relevant literature, there is a need for empirical studies to analyze the use of social media for political communication by political parties during nonelection periods. In this context, this study, using a metrics set, aims to analyze the engagement level and engagement type of the political parties with public in Turkey on Facebook as a social media tool in a non-election period. The findings of our analysis
show that the engagement level of the political parties with public on Facebook in Turkey is low. Moreover, political parties in Turkey fail to communicate with the public in a bidirectional way on Facebook.
In this issue of the Journal of Democracy, Roberto Foa and Yascha Mounk write that the citizens of many countries are becoming dissatisfied with democracy and increasingly open to nondemocratic alternatives. Although I agree with Foa and Mounk’s central claim that public faith in democracy has eroded during the past two decades while support for nondemocratic alternatives has risen, their data suggest that this phenomenon is, in large part, a specifically American period effect. The United States is distinctive because in recent years U.S. democracy has become appallingly dysfunctional. In fact, evidence from some key indicators suggests that the mass basis of support for democracy is growing stronger.
Facebook is rapidly gaining recognition as a powerful research tool for the social sciences. It
constitutes a large and diverse pool of participants, who can be selectively recruited for both
online and offline studies. Additionally, it facilitates data collection by storing detailed records of
its users’ demographic profiles, social interactions, and behaviors. With participants’ consent,
these data can be recorded retrospectively in a convenient, accurate, and inexpensive way. Based
on our experience in designing, implementing, and maintaining multiple Facebook-based
psychological studies that attracted over 10 million participants, we demonstrate how to recruit
participants using Facebook, incentivize them effectively, and maximize their engagement. We
also outline the most important opportunities and challenges associated with using Facebook for
research; provide several practical guidelines on how to successfully implement studies on
Facebook; and finally, discuss ethical considerations.
In this article, we analyse changes, and the debates about changes, in the relationship between Norwegian political parties and their members. We ask whether parties develop from mass parties towards a 'network model', and whether such changes represent organizational convergence. The organizational diagnoses of the parties and their prescribed cures are similar. Thematic network structures, increased inclusiveness and membership ballots are debated within the parties, but actual change has been modest. While the Internet has brought about substantial change in the internal communication of parties, there is remarkable stability in Norwegian party organizations. Many of the structures and practices of the mass party remain, but network structures have emerged as an alternative ideal.
This chapter discusses how well our understanding of political parties, based on the knowledge and models of political parties in established democracies, can help us to understand political parties in new democracies. Armed with concepts and models from the party literature, party scholars have tried to make sense of the vastly expanded universe of parties in the wake of the third wave of democratization. Are parties and party systems in newer democracies very different from parties in established democracies? And if so, are there commonalities between parties in newer democracies? This chapter revisits the debate on parties and democracy while discussing three related topics (typologies, functions, and contrasts of parties between old and new democracies) within the study of political parties to discuss the extent to which our understanding of political parties in established democracies is adequate when applied to new democracies. © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013. All rights are reserved.
Many fear that democracies are suffering from a legitimacy crisis. This book focuses on ‘democratic deficits’, reflecting how far the perceived democratic performance of any state diverges from public expectations. Pippa Norris examines the symptoms by comparing system support in more than fifty societies worldwide, challenging the pervasive claim that most established democracies have experienced a steadily rising tide of political disaffection during the third-wave era. The book diagnoses the reasons behind the democratic deficit, including demand (rising public aspirations for democracy), information (negative news about government) and supply (the performance and structure of democratic regimes). Finally, Norris examines the consequences for active citizenship, for governance and, ultimately, for democratization. This book provides fresh insights into major issues at the heart of comparative politics, public opinion, political culture, political behavior, democratic governance, political psychology, political communications, public policymaking, comparative sociology, cross-national survey analysis and the dynamics of the democratization process.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to provide an initial assessment of corporate Facebook use by Spanish hotel chains. Two aspects are considered: communication activity and stakeholder engagement through this social media platform.
Design/methodology/approach
– Based on a content analysis, data on 109 Spanish hotel chains are collected to describe current practices and identify significant relationships among different variables.
Findings
– The main findings include that their Facebook presence, audiences and levels of activity are positively related to hotel size, while stakeholder engagement is higher in small hotel chains and seems to be influenced by content and media types.
Originality/value
– This research contributes to previous research by providing an assessment of corporate Facebook in the hospitality industry (Spanish hotel chains). The paper considers two aspects: communication activity and stakeholder engagement through this social media platform.
Wie hat das Internet die individuelle politische Kommunikation von Bürgerinnen und Bürgern in Deutschland verändert? Welche konkreten Kommunikationsmuster sind zu beobachten und wie sind sie zu erklären? Das von 2002 bis 2009 laufende DFG-Projekt "Politische Online-Kommunikation" geht diesen Fragen nach: Auf der Grundlage einer groß angelegten Panelstudie dokumentieren die Autoren die Entwicklung der politischen Kommunikationsaktivitäten der befragten Bürger im zeitlichen Verlauf. Untersucht werden sowohl Informationsaktivitäten wie das Lesen politischer Internetseiten als auch die interpersonale politische Online-Kommunikation sowie politische Partizipationsaktivitäten im Internet. Neben der dichten Beschreibung der Entwicklung politischer Online- und Offline-Kommunikation werden eine Reihe von Erklärungsmodellen für das Kommunikationsverhalten geprüft.
This article: Confirms that e-participation is multi-dimensional with prior modes of participation emerging online. Shows that these online activities have mobilising effects and that this relationship appears to work largely in a step-wise or ‘spill-over’ manner. Demonstrates that accessing online news and information acts as a ‘gateway’ or first step into participation. Argues that the more active modes of online participation do not appear to exert any mobilising effects on other types of post-election engagement. Shows that the dynamics of Internet participation are more complex than the ‘one size fits all’ approach that dominates the current literature.
In this study we test whether a range of online political activities undertaken during the campaign affect the propensity to engage in non-electoral types of online and offline political engagement subsequently. We develop three hypotheses accounting for this linkage based on a ‘spill-over’ logic about (1) the effort required for the action; (2) the type of activity undertaken (formal versus informal); and (3) the medium on which the action occurs (online or offline). We test our hypotheses with a pre/post-election panel dataset from the UK 2010 General Election. The results show that after controlling for prior political engagement, online information seeking during the campaign has a significant and positive effect on further engagement in ‘softer’ discussion modes of participation. The findings are seen to confirm that Internet-based political mobilisation works in a ‘step-wise’ manner whereby lower intensity activities spill-over to move individuals a little further up the participation ladder.
This article is the introduction to a special issue of articles written in honour of Peter Mair. The general theme of the issue is party adaptation and change, which is traced here through an analysis of contributions by Peter Mair as an individual author or with co-authors. The result is an assessment of the current state of the art of what can be cumulatively considered Peter Mair's theory of party adaptation and of the debate it has generated up to and including the contributions included in the special issue itself.
L’étude de cas présentée dans cet article permet d’examiner certaines particularités de l’expérience participative des médias sociaux par les adolescents. L’examen du contenu vidéo mis en ligne sur YouTube par une adolescente québécoise met en lumière cinq modalités de constitution d’un « soi relationnel » à travers l’affirmation progressive de sa « voix publique ». Dans les séquences vidéo sur le rejet et l’intimidation à l’école secondaire, ces modalités de mise en relation de soi permettent une politisation de l’expérience personnelle, dont l’expression intimiste redessine les notions d’engagement et de participation au-delà de la dichotomie public/privé.
This study explores how candidates running for the European Parliament (EP) in 2009 used micro-blogging and online social networks – in this case Twitter (www.twitter.com) in the early stage of its adoption – to communicate and connect with citizens. Micro-blogging in general, and Twitter in particular, is one of the new and popular Web 2.0 applications, yet there has been little research focusing on the use of Twitter by politicians. After reviewing different types of campaigning strategies and introducing a new and distinct strategy, this descriptive and exploratory study focuses on political candidates' use of micro-blogging and online social networking (i.e. Twitter) from a longitudinal, social network, and ideological perspective. The results clearly show that most candidates in 2009 still used Twitter reluctantly. Those who used Twitter did so predominantly for electoral campaigning and only sparingly for continuous campaigning. Candidates from progressive parties are the most active users of Twitter as a campaigning tool, whereas conservatives are virtually absent online. Although candidates' first degree networks are still relatively small and unconnected, their second degree networks are quite extensive. Candidates from parties in opposition have more extensive first degree networks than those from ruling parties. Candidates from fringe parties show small online networks.
Online communication has become a central part in the communication repertoires of political actors in Western mass democracies. In Switzerland, where broadband, internet use, and media literacy are amongst the highest in the world, all major political parties run their own website and are active on social media. This article seeks to show how Swiss political parties deal with social media, how they implement it and how they use social media. The study builds on empirical data from a structural analysis of party websites, the official Facebook sites, and Twitter feeds. These social media sites were analysed for their resonance, update frequency, and thematic clusters focusing on information, mobilization, and participation. A weekly assessment of the user numbers illustrates the development of user resonance throughout the 2011 election year. While political parties claim to appreciate the dialogue and mobilization potentials of social media, they mainly use social media as an additional channel to spread information and electoral propaganda. The overall resonance is still on a very low level. The data seem to sustain the normalization hypothesis, as larger parties with more resources and voters are better able to generate effective communication and to mobilize online than small and marginal parties.
This study aims to propose a set of metrics in order to assess reactivity, dialogic communication and stakeholder engagement (popularity, commitment and virality): stakeholders’ mood and social legitimacy on corporate Facebook pages. These metrics can offer a better understanding and measurability of this social media/social network/online communication management tool.
Design/methodology/approach – Three theories (dialogic, stakeholders and legitimacy) were considered in the development of these metrics. Empirical evidence was collected from a sample of 314 European companies. Then ten active companies were used to validate the proposed metrics on Facebook.
Findings – The constructed set of metrics was found to be valid and efficiently usable according to the principles of the applied theories. Moreover all the proposed metrics could be adapted for such sites as Google +
Research limitations/implications – Limitations can only be identified within the validation
process as the metrics were only applied to ten representative companies from the Eurozone.
Practical implications – The proposed metrics will help users, marketing/PR/ communication professionals and company managers to measure their and their competitors’ popularity, commitment, virality (metrics which reflect stakeholder engagement), and the mood of stakeholders, and use content analysis in order to measure social legitimacy via CSR information disclosure on Facebook. Thus the
online reputation of a company can be practically measured.
Originality/value – This paper is the first proposing metrics to assess stakeholder engagement and social legitimacy on a corporate Facebook page that can be used in both academic and professional circles to a gain a better understanding of corporate online communication via Facebook.
This conversation started in Prague, the Czech Republic, during a panel moderated by Irena Reifová at the symposium ‘On Empowered and Impassioned Audiences in the Age of Media Convergence’. The event was organized by the Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University. The text contains a series of discussions. First, there is a conversation about the nature of the participatory democratic utopia and participatory culture and how groups take (or do not take) advantage of the affordances of new and emerging media. It also emphasizes the political nature and potential of popular culture and touches upon its connection to institutionalized politics. Three other key areas are mentioned: the role of different cultures of leadership, the significance of organizations in structuring participatory processes, and the need to enhance civic learning, providing more support for participatory cultures. This is combined with an interlocking discussion about the definition of participation and how it is tied up with power. It covers the differences between participation and interaction, engagement, interpretation, production, curation, and circulation. Finally, there is an underlying strand of discussion about the role of academia, focusing on the relationship between critical theory and cultural studies, the need to deconstruct our own frameworks and the question of which language to use to communicate academic research to the public.
Blogging is an increasingly important practice in election campaigns, showing interesting variations across contexts. Recent research has shown that the adoption and use of blogs is strongly shaped by national institutional settings, that is, the different roles given to parties within political systems. However, intra-national differences in the practice of political blogging are yet to be explained. This article investigates the variation in usage of blogs in electoral campaigns in Sweden, a country characterized by strong political parties and a party-centered form of representative democracy. The central argument is that different parties utilize blogging in different ways. Just as blogging is shaped by how institutions support persons or parties, we propose that political blogging is shaped by party affiliation and ideological positions on individualism and collectivism. The empirical analysis, based on a survey among over 600 blogging politicians, confirms that ideological positions towards individualism and collectivism have a great impact on the uptake and usage of political blogs, portraying political blogging as a strongly ideologically situated practice of political communication.
Models explaining the rise of American-style or so-called postmodern campaigning have focused primarily on changes taking place at the systemic level. While these models help explain variance across countries where these techniques are used, they do not explain variations among individual parties. Given that not all parties adopt these tactics and techniques at the same time, the authors argue that there are party-specific variables that need to be taken into account when understanding the shift to the new campaigning era. Building on the existing literature, the authors identify the key traits of what they term professionalized campaigning and the variables that prime a party to adopt it. The article goes on to develop a causal model, based on external and internal party events or shocks, that explains why a particular party would embrace this new style of campaigning. Finally, the authors operationalize their theory and develop indicators to measure the key variables for empirical testing.
“Viral videos”—online video clips that gain widespread popularity when they are passed from person to person via e-mail, instant messages, and media-sharing Web sites—can exert a strong influence on election campaigns. Unfortunately, there has been almost no systematic empirical research on the factors that lead viral videos to spread across the Internet and permeate into the dominant political discourse. This article provides an initial assessment of the complex relationships that drive viral political videos by examining the interplay between audience size, blog discussion, campaign statements, and mainstream media coverage of the most popular online political video of the 2008 campaign—will.i.am's “Yes We Can” music video. Using vector autoregression, I find strong evidence that the relationship between these variables is complex and multidirectional. More specifically, I argue that bloggers and members of the Obama campaign played crucial roles in convincing people to watch the video and in attracting media coverage, while journalists had little influence on the levels of online viewership, blog discussion, or campaign support. Bloggers and campaign members, in other words, seem to occupy a unique and influential position in determining whether an online political video goes viral.
This paper examines the impact of the Internet, specifically the World Wide Web (WWW) and e-mail on Australian parties in two key areas: (1) party communication: what exactly are parties using their Websites for? and (2) party competition: does the Internet lower the threshold for smaller parties to communicate their message compared with the traditional media? We examine these questions with two types of data—a questionnaire of party communication staff and content analysis of a representative sample of party Websites. Our findings show, first, that Australian parties have taken a fairly cautious approach to the new medium, using it primarily as an information storehouse rather than putting it to more innovative use. Second, while almost all Australian parties have a Web presence, there is a divide between those parties with parliamentary representation and those without in terms of their site quality and visibility on the Web. The study concludes by interpreting the findings in the context of research on parties' use of the Internet worldwide.
This study addresses dynamics of viral information in the blogosphere, and is interested in empirically understanding how blogs play a role in the virality process. More specifically, we develop a new methodology that creates a map of the 'life cycle' of blogs posting links to viral information. Our dataset focuses on the linking practices of blogs to the most significant viral videos of the 2008 US presidential election. To do so, we gathered data on all blogs (n=9,765) and their posts (n=13,173) linking to 65 of the top US presidential election videos that became viral on the Internet during the period between March 2007 and June 2009. Among other things, our findings illuminate the importance of different types of blogs: elite, top-political, top-general and tail blogs. We also found that while elite and top-general blogs create political information, they drive and sustain the viral process, whereas top-political and tail blogs act as followers in the process.
This arose as part of an ongoing project on ‘Visions of Governance for the Twenty‐first Century’ initiated in 1996 at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, which aims to explore what people want from government, the public sector, and non‐profit organizations. A first volume from the ‘Visions’ project (Why People Don’t Trust Government) was published by Harvard University Press in 1997; this second volume analyses a series of interrelated questions. The first two are diagnostic: how far are there legitimate grounds for concern about public support for democracy worldwide; and are trends towards growing cynicism found in the US evident in many established and newer democracies? The second concern is analytical: what are the main political, economic, and cultural factors driving the dynamics of support for democratic government? The final questions are prescriptive: what are the consequences of this analysis and what are the implications for strengthening democratic governance? The book brings together a distinguished group of international scholars who develop a global analysis of these issues by looking at trends in established and newer democracies towards the end of the twentieth century. Chapters draw upon the third wave (1995–1997) World Values Survey as well as using an extensive range of comparative empirical evidence.
Challenging the conventional wisdom, the book concludes that accounts of a democratic ‘crisis’ are greatly exaggerated. By the mid‐1990s most citizens worldwide shared widespread aspirations to the ideals and principles of democratic government, although at the same time there remains a marked gap between evaluations of the ideal and the practice of democracy. The publics in many newer democracies in Central and Eastern Europe and in Latin America have proved deeply critical of the performance of their governing regimes, and during the 1980s many established democracies saw a decline in public confidence in the core institutions of representative democracy, including parliaments, the legal system, and political parties. The book considers the causes and consequences of the development of critical citizens in three main parts: cross‐national trends in confidence in governance; testing theories with case studies; and explanations of trends.