Welcome to the InfoSci Platform
Reference Hub13
Interacting with Whom?: Swedish Parliamentarians on Twitter during the 2014 Elections

Interacting with Whom?: Swedish Parliamentarians on Twitter during the 2014 Elections

Jakob Svensson, Anders Olof Larsson
Copyright: © 2016 |Volume: 7 |Issue: 1 |Pages: 15
ISSN: 1947-9131|EISSN: 1947-914X|EISBN13: 9781466691483|DOI: 10.4018/IJEP.2016010101
Cite Article Cite Article

MLA

Svensson, Jakob, and Anders Olof Larsson. "Interacting with Whom?: Swedish Parliamentarians on Twitter during the 2014 Elections." IJEP vol.7, no.1 2016: pp.1-15. http://doi.org/10.4018/IJEP.2016010101

APA

Svensson, J. & Larsson, A. O. (2016). Interacting with Whom?: Swedish Parliamentarians on Twitter during the 2014 Elections. International Journal of E-Politics (IJEP), 7(1), 1-15. http://doi.org/10.4018/IJEP.2016010101

Chicago

Svensson, Jakob, and Anders Olof Larsson. "Interacting with Whom?: Swedish Parliamentarians on Twitter during the 2014 Elections," International Journal of E-Politics (IJEP) 7, no.1: 1-15. http://doi.org/10.4018/IJEP.2016010101

Export Reference

Mendeley
Favorite Full-Issue Download

Abstract

This article explores Swedish Parliamentarians' Twitter practices during the 2014 general elections. For individual candidates, the political party is important for positions within the party and on the ballot, especially in a party-centered democracy. A previous qualitative (n)ethnographic research project during the previous elections in 2010, in which one campaigning politician was studied in-depth, found that her social media practices to a large extent were inward-facing, focusing on the own party network. But does this result resonate among all Swedish Parliamentarians? Specifically, the authors ask: is Twitter primarily used interactively, for intra-party communication, to interact with strategic voter groups or voters in general? By analyzing all Parliamentarians tweets two weeks up to the elections the authors conclude that retweeting was done within a party political network while @messaging was directed towards political opponents. Mass media journalists and editorial writers were important in Parliamentarians' Twitter practices, while so-called ordinary voters were more absent.

Request Access

You do not own this content. Please login to recommend this title to your institution's librarian or purchase it from the IGI Global bookstore.