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on how to study such digitally mediated visuals (and their functions). In this paper we study whether Swedish parties use Instagram for image management
(seeking to manage the audience’s impression of the party) and/or for mobilization (as parties want supporters to the ballots). Given that Sweden is a par‑
ty-based democracy, we focus on parties’postings. Image management is measured by privatization and personalization. Personalization refers to whether
a posting (picture with or without caption) is primarily carried by one (or more) single person(s) or many people or no people are seen in the picture.
Privatization refers to whether a top candidate/party leader is visible (or not) and in which context she/he is predominantly displayed: professional/political
context (at a rally, shaking hands, giving a speech etc.) versus a personal/private context (family, hobbies, personal matters etc.). To study mobilization
we measure whether a posting calls for action or not. Additionally, we examine explicit reference to the elections (e.g. a campaign poster, a voting booth
or a hashtag related to the elections) as it tells us something about the use of Instagram as an integral part of the campaign. During the last four weeks
of the 2014 Swedish national elections (Election Day: 14.09.2014) the parties in the study published between zero (Sweden Democrats) and 213 (Feminist
Initiative) postings. Only the Feminists and the Liberals (59 postings) made great use of Instagram. At best, parties posted once a day during the campaign.
But parties’activities on Instagram were steadily increasing throughout the last month of the campaign and on Election Day parties uploaded 37 postings.
However, the content analysis of parties’ Instagram accounts shows that almost three-fourths of the pictures have an explicit reference to the election
(campaigns). The image management strategy by Swedish parties on Instagram is characterized by personalization and top candidates/party leaders were
primarily displayed in a (rather) professional and political context. And instead of calling voters to action Instagram has largely been used for intra-party
mobilization and communication.
PN 042
Assessing Social Media Strategies – Comparing Twitter and Instagram Use During the 2015 Norwegian Elections
A.O. Larsson
1
1
Westerdals Oslo School of Arts- Communication & Technology, Oslo, Norway
While the degree to which social media are actually contributing to electoral success can be called into question, online platforms such as Twitter are nev‑
ertheless seen as integral parts of contemporary election campaigns. Plenty of attention has been devoted to Twitter in particular, leading to what must
be considered as a dearth of research looking into the uses of other social media services. The paper at hand seeks to remedy this apparent research gap
by presenting a study comparing Twitter – with a more recent contender, the image-sharing service Instagram. The specific empirical setting for studying
the uses of these two services is the 2015 Norwegian municipal and regional elections. Norway, often understood as one of the Nordic welfare states fea‑
tures a party-centered political system and advanced levels of Internet use – at the hands of citizens as well as government officials. As such, the Norwegian
context appears as a suitable one in which to analyze recent developments regarding the platforms under scrutiny. While the two platforms under scrutiny
certainly differ in many aspects, they nevertheless share a number of commonalities. For example, the use of hashtags, keywords employed by users to
thematically‘tag’their posted content as relevant for a specific event, occurrence or topic, is common on both Twitter and Instagram. Hashtags dealing with
the election at hand were utilized for data collection. Our focus was placed on the‘short campaign’– the final month of campaigning leading up to election
day, which took place on September 14
th
, 2015. Data collection was initiated on August 14
th
and was terminated two days after Election Day in order to catch
the electoral aftermath. Initial results indicate that while Twitter emerged as having a reactive relationship to specific events taking place in established
media, such an association with established media was not found for Instagram. As such, Twitter use continues its clear association to political debates and
the likes, while political Instagram use appears to go in another direction. As for what types of political actors that succeeded in gaining attention on each
platform, differing tendencies were found for Twitter and Instagram respectively. While previous scholarship had suggested that Twitter use would be char‑
acterized by normalizing tendencies, with comparably larger actors dominating the discourse, the results contrarily show the platform to be characterized
by activity undertaken by or related to comparably small political actors. Conversely, the suggestion from previous research that a comparably new service
like Instagram would be characterized by equalizing tendencies – with a high presence of smaller political actors – proved to be erroneous. Much like for
the relation of social media use in relation to established media discussed above, Instagram thus appears to be developing differently from Twitter.
PN 043
Citizen Engagement on YouTube: Viewer Responses on Campaign Videos in the Dutch General Election in 2012
M. Vergeer
1
1
Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands
Political campaigning is very expensive. Particularly buying time on TV or space in newspapers puts a heavy strain on political parties’ campaign budget.
Specifically in the Netherlands where we have seen many Parliament elections over the last decades. In 2012 new elections took place only two years after
the previous elections. As a result political parties need cheap channels for political communication. Social media are these cheap channels which have
become quite popular among political parties. However they do not lend themselves easily for visual communication.YouTube however is particularly inter‑
esting for party communication, whereas Twitter is mostly used for personal communication by party candidates. Twitter, which in the Netherlands is one
of the most popular social media platforms for political campaigning, is for personalized, commenting on what’s happening here and now.YouTube content,
on the other hand, has more long lasting relevance and is more deliberative. Its content is produced mostly first for television, then uploaded to YouTube,
to be embedded on the political party website. As a results, these videos can be visited over and over again by people orienting themselves who to vote for.
This study focusses on YouTube videos produced by all political parties in the 2012 campaign. The research questions are: • To what extent do these video’s
elicit responses? • To what extent do these responses convey positive and/or negative sentiments? • To what extent do significant events (political or other)
affect viewer activities onYouTube? Data and designThe data were collected for all political parties participating in the elections.The total number of videos
uploaded in the period of January 1
st
, 2012 to September 12, 2012 was 331, while the total number of comments was 5223. Using a time series design this
study looks at how the YouTube campaign progresses over time, both from the political parties’ upload activities as well as from the viewers’ perspective
regarding the content of the comments provided. Keywords: YouTube, political campaigning, sentiment analysis, time series analysis