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POL03
Political Campaigning Beyond Facebook and Twitter: Five European Perspectives
U. Klinger
1
1
University of Zurich, IPMZ - Institute for Mass Communication and Media Research, Zurich, Switzerland
In the past ten years, research on political communication has dedicated a substantial amount of attention to how and why political actors and organiza‑
tions use social media. Scholars have tackled a wide array of research topics, such as adoption in campaign repertoires, the effects of tweets/posts, who
tweets/posts about politics, when and how or how political actors and citizens communicate on Twitter and Facebook during campaign events (Jungherr
2014). Scholars have discussed normalization and equalization effects and the impact of local political and media structures on social media use in political
campaigning. As the Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics (2016) documents, an impressive amount of knowledge has been generated so far,
but social media in politics is still an emerging field. It is striking that research on social media in political communication is still almost entirely based on
Facebook and (to a much larger extent) Twitter. What about Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Tinder or Snapchat? These platforms show a huge increase in
users, with Instagram already beingmore popular thanTwitter in January 2016
(www.statista.com). But are these platforms also becomingmore important
for political communication? For example, in the Swiss national election campaign of 2015 one candidate used Tinder to mobilize voters. This was discussed
controversially, while several commercial brands and NGOs such as Amnesty International have been campaigning on Tinder for some time. Or are Facebook
andTwitter becoming the rats and zebra fish of political communication - the„model organisms“, fromwhich we extrapolate knowledge about social media
in general? This panel seeks to bring forward comparative perspectives on current developments in online political campaigning that go beyond Facebook
and Twitter, exploring whether the use of social media for political purposes is becoming more diverse as the user patterns expand to various social media
platforms, or whether (and if so, why) it consolidates around the two most established platforms. To enhance comparability of the panel contributions and
to ensure a coherent discussion, all authors address these questions: •What role do social media other than Facebook and Twitter play in political communi‑
cation? • Are political actors and organizations adopting other social media for campaigning? • What are the reasons why political actors and/or citizens are
migrating from Facebook andTwitter? • How is politics performed and what effects can be expected from campaigning on social media other than Facebook
and Twitter? • Which theoretical and methodological challenges do we encounter when researching new and diverse platforms? The panel of five European
perspectives brings together leading scholars from several European countries, presenting data fromNorway, Sweden, the Netherlands and Romania to dis‑
cuss where research on social media and political campaigning can go and to develop ideas for comparative projects, answers to methodological challenges
and theory innovation that go beyond the“usual suspects”. Bruns, A. et al. (Eds.). (2015). The Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics. Routledge.
Jungherr, A. (2014). Twitter in politics: a comprehensive literature review. Available at SSRN 2402443.
PN 040
Personalization or Not Personalization – That’s the Question!
E. Skogerbø
1
1
University of Oslo, Department of Media and Communication, Oslo, Norway
Numerous studies have been done over the past decade to map, describe and analyze the increasing use of social media for political purposes. The bulk
of these studies have been done on services such asTwitter, and to some extent Facebook andYouTube, and often in the context of election campaigns. More
recent platforms, e.g. Instagram, Snapchat and Tinder, have yet to be studied with equal intensity. These platforms have a less public aspect than YouTube,
Twitter and, to an increasing extent, Facebook, and are particularly interesting from the perspective of personalization. Personalization has been a key term
in studies of politicians and the way they stage themselves. Personalization have been described both as a journalistic tool for simplification of political news
and as a tool for political marketing and branding. Both aspects have been topics for social media research (Enli and Skogerbø 2015, Bruns, Enli et al. 2016).
What have these studies added to our understanding of personalization of politics? Should we perceive of social media as a tool for professional campaign‑
ing where personalization equals branding, or do we see new forms of political communication between professional politicians, citizens and other political
actors? Do we find similar results across political systems or are there differences that can be attributed to cultural, political and geographical contexts? How
should personalization of politics be defined and described in the age of social media? Drawing on findings from a number of recent studies on social media
and politics, the paper reflects on the current status of knowledge of how social media impact on personalization. Further, what theoretical implications
do they have, and in particular, what hypotheses can be generated in order to understand and analyze new platforms? Bruns, A., G. Enli, E. Skogerbø, A.
O. Larsson and C. Christensen, Eds. (2016). The Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics. New York, Routledge. Enli, G. and E. Skogerbø (2015).
Personalized campaigns in party-centred politics: Twitter and Facebook as arenas for political communication. Social Media and Election Campaigns - Key
Tendencies andWays Forward. G. Enli and H. Moe, Routledge: 119–135.
PN 041
Staying on the Bandwagon – Swedish Parties’ Adoption and Use of Instagram During the 2014 Elections
U. Russmann
1
, J. Svensson
2
1
University of Applied Sciences of WKW Vienna, Vienna, Austria
2
Uppsala University, Department of Informatics and Media, Uppsala, Sweden
The 2014 Swedish elections were among the first elections inwhich political parties used Instagram. Instagram is clearly on the rise. About 28%of the Swed‑
ish population aged 12 and older regularly uses Instagram (the numbers for Twitter is 23%) and 17% of them even on a daily basis (Twitter: 6%). This pro‑
vides us with an unprecedented opportunity to examine the first attempts of parties to adopt and use this new social media platform. Instagram’s focus on
visuals makes it different from other rather text-based social media platforms. As such Instagram can be an important campaign instrument as research in
the field of visual communication has found that pictures are more effective than text in increasing viewer’s attention. Indeed, images contain signs and
create meaning and can thus be described as source of communication in addition to written or spoken text (iconic turn). As parties turn to platforms that
are increasingly becoming centered on visuals, one of the greatest challenges for political communication research, both theoretical and methodological, is