Journal of Applied Journalism & Media Studies - Volume 9, Issue 2, 2020

Detailing processes related to direct representation in a longitudinal fashion, the study at hand gauges the degree to which Swedish political parties have utilized their Facebook pages during a four-year period covering two elections. Moreover, the study provides insights into citizen interaction by measuring the types of engagement preferred by Facebook users in relation to the party pages. Results indicate that while the bulk of parties appear as largely organizing their online activity in relation to election campaigns, the small, non-parliamentary Pirate Party emerges as taking an approach more in line with the permanent campaign aspect of direct representation. Moreover, while results indicate that citizens are indeed engaging with parties on Facebook, they do so mostly through ‘liking’ rather than commenting – arguably a tendency suggesting limited interest in online discussion and deliberation.

Inspired by Coleman’s call for a more ‘direct representation’, we address two neglected issues within the field of social media and political communication. We study a non-election period in Sweden (two randomly selected weeks in early 2016) and conduct a cross-platform comparison. The article is based on content analyses of the four prominent social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. We seek to answer the following questions: do parties use social media platforms in-between elections? If so, for what purposes? Do parties use social media to interact in a direct manner with citizens? We focus on three different Swedish parties: the Social Democrats (incumbent), the Feminist Initiative (underdog) and the Sweden Democrats (populist right-wing). Our findings suggest a bleak direct representation in-between elections. Parties are more active on social media platforms during election campaigns. Twitter is the preferred platform, especially by the incumbent party for broadcasting achievements.

Twitter has already become one of the most important social media platforms for political communication. Concerning the use of Twitter in politics, two possible developments have been at the core of the theoretical discussion – equalization and normalization. As normalization seems to be the case in most western countries about politicians’ Twitter use, it is yet unknown to what extent this debate can be applied to non-election times. The aim of our study is threefold. First, we address the debate of normalization on Twitter with a focus on the activity level on Twitter. Second, we classify the politicians based on their activity level in order to investigate to what extent the Twitter use still differs even if a high level of adoption has been reached. Third, we analyse the impact of the traditional media on the Twittersphere during parliamentary and non-parliamentary phases, thus focusing on non-election times. Our results show that even though media attention gives some politicians an advantage online, equalization tendencies are still possible on Twitter if politicians actively use the platform.

Social media offer direct lines of communication to many democratic representatives, and, in some instances, they may provide policy-makers and journalists with a better sense of public views. But, are the voices expressed on social media worth heeding? Impersonal and anonymous communication often invites negativity and abuse, including racism and sexism. Indeed, evidence suggests that women face particularly high levels of abuse online. And yet we know relatively little about the role of sexism in citizens’ digitally mediated interactions with their political representatives. Do people direct more criticism and hostility towards female politicians? Using Twitter data comparing political engagement in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States, we actually find reason for optimism. In the United Kingdom and the United States, there are no differences in the tone of messages sent to male and female politicians, and Dutch citizens direct more positive messages towards women. Across all three countries, gendered insults towards women are rare.

The challenge democratic politics face at the moment is not how to preserve its pristine stability from radical disturbance, but how to salvage its most fundamental norms from the prevalent drift towards authoritarianism, populism and xenophobia. If there is to be an effective salvage operation, democracies must be open to radical reconfiguration – perhaps even re-invention. To realize this opportunity, however, entails confronting the fundamental mismatch that exists between governmental logic and the increasingly embedded practices of socially networked citizens. This entails drawing upon the fullest range of interactive features of the current media ecology in order to establish a permanent and ongoing conversation between representatives and the citizens they represent, while at the same time facilitating lateral interaction between citizens and between decision-making institutions and those most likely to be affected by their decisions.