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PP 519
Mediated (Dis)Continuities Within Political and Governmental Communication. A Comparative Content Analysis of Social Media
Activities of European National Governments 2011–15
H. Sievert
1
, C. Leßmann
2
1
Macromedia University, Head of Media School, Cologne, Germany
2
Macromedia University, Media School, Cologne, Germany
1. SHORT IN
TRODUCTION:Withinthe past years, also official political communication has started to change by adapting to the new“channels like”social me‑
dia. But at what stage is e. g. governmental communication right now? The paper proposed here focusses on the social media communication of the British,
German and French national governments in 2015, compared to of two predecessor studies in 2011 and 2014 by partly the same authors. It is looking for
mediated (dis)continuities in this context. 2. SELECTED PREVIOUS RESEARCH: Looking at the state of research in the last few years, there has been for exam‑
ple a study by Meckel et al. (2013) about the social media usage by German politicians as well as a study by Arthur Mickoleit in cooperation with the OECD
(2014) that has dealt with the same topic as this one the social media usage by governments. The main findings of those studies, including the own two
predecessor studies, are that the social media usage by governmental actors has steadily (but slower) increased over the past years as has the political social
media usage by citizens, but with very limit dialogue opportunities so far. 3. OVERALL METHODOLOGY: For the current research a quantitative content analy‑
sis mixed with some qualitative elements for the reply and dialogue part with the help of four codebooks was chosen.The first codebook served the analysis
of classical government-websites and their link to social media. With the second codebook, the base of the social media-channels was examined. The third
codebook served inspecting each relevant post specifically. Finally the fourth codebook focused on the interaction via social media. Altogether six govern‑
mental websites, 20 different social media-sites, 373 individual posts and articles and 194 interactive reply comments by governments have been analysed
intensivley only for the new 2015 study. 4. FIRST RESULTS INSIGHTS: To give just some very short insights, compared to the predecessor studies in 2011 and
2014, there has been a further increase in social media usage since the number of channels analysed has increased up to 32 percent only between 2014 and
2015 and up to 212 (!) percent per country average since 2011. Roughly this is also the case for number of postings (+15 percent/+301 percent). In addition,
another observation is the persistent importance of personification – about two thirds of the postings of the German and English government contained
information about Angela Merkel and David Cameron.The greatest transformation though can be seen in the changing potential for interaction, e. g. during
the examination period the German government has answered for nearly second post comments of citizens. 5. SHORT CONCLUSION: The findings of this
paper show clear, that mediated (dis)continuities regarding official governmental social media communication is still in a critical development. The past
was mainly focussed on pure information, the present is a mixed of unfiltered government advertisement in some countries and first step of real dialogue
with citizens in some others. However, a really feasible concept for the future seem to be missing everywhere.
PP 520
Understanding Citizenship, Understanding Social Media Effects? Testing for the Influence of Political Social Media Use on Citizens
Understanding of Citizenship and Their Political Participation
J. Ohme
1
, C. de Vreese
2
, E. Albæk
3
1
University of Southern Denmark, Centre for Journalism, Odense M, Denmark
2
University of Amsterdam, ASCoR, Amsterdam, Netherlands
3
University of Southern Denmark, Centre for Journalism, Odense, Denmark
In a convergent media environment, social media platforms play an increasing role as sources for political information and hubs for political participation
in bigger parts of Western societies (Chadwick, 2013; Schulz, 2014; Theocharis, 2015). Therefore research has to stay tuned to possible effects the political
use of such platforms can have on citizens’political behavior. There is an ongoing discussion about how the use of digital media might impact the political
participation of citizens. So far, little agreement has been reach for the questions, if the use of social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter has a mobiliz‑
ing effect on citizens or if it only leads to a reinforcement of already existing participation patterns (Anduzia, Perera, Jensen & Jorba, 2012; Cantijoch, 2009).
However, a recent meta-analysis concludes that there is evidence for a slight positive effect social media use can have on political participation (Boulainne,
2015). A question yet to be answered is which characteristics of social media use can actually impact patterns of political participation. Little is known, if
it is inadvertent exposure to political content (Gil de Zúñiga, Jung & Valenzuela, 2012), the easier access to information or the consistency of ones social
media network, that is indeed impactful. Our study argues that the use of social media results in a more personalized and individual political media diet.
Against the background of mass medias' function to convey civic norms (Bennett, 2008;Thorson, 2015) we test the assumption that the exposure to political
information via social media has an impact on users understanding of citizenship, dependent on their network characteristics. These differences in the un‑
derstanding of citizenship are hypothesized to explain changes in the political participation of the users. Building on the paradigm of actualizing vs. dutiful
citizens (Bennett, 2008), a model is developed, which tests for the impact of social media use for political information on the understanding of citizenship
(choice vs. duty; collective vs. individual). We furthermore test if this relationship is moderated by network size, network diversity and political activity
of ones social media network. An empirical analysis is conducted, combining data from a smartphone-based media diary over the course of 10 subsequent
days in October 2015 and panel data from a representative sample of the Danish population (N=4460). Exposure data was assessed with a new three-step
measurement (The AUTHORS, 2016), allowing for a observation of different content types citizens were exposed to on social media, the number of contacts
they received political content from (network size) and the relation they have with these contacts (network diversity) on a daily basis. The understanding
of citizenship was measured with a new battery of 12 items, mapping a selectable vs. dutiful respectively a collective vs. individual understanding of citi‑
zenship. Preliminary results show evidence for the hypothesized mediated impact of social media exposure to political information on political participation
via network characteristics. A more thorough analysis of the relationship, however, has yet to come and will be presented at the conference.