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Genres of Participation in
Social Networking Systems:
A Study of the 2009 Norwegian
Parliamentary Election
Marius Rohde Johannessen
Research Fellow
Department of Information Systems
University of Agder, Norway
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The main issue
•Political parties are trying to communicate through social media
•… but not succeeding very well
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Outline
•Background• Norwegian political context
• Political use of the Internet
• media fragmentation
•Methodology
•Findings• Preferred genres (party objectives)
• Genres used
•Summary
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Why is this interesting?
•Miscommunication is a problem for democracy
•Genre theory is a starting point for theoretical discussions (ie. Public Sphere)
•Genres makes sense to practitioners
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Norwegian politics from social movements…
• Post WW2: Common challenges:
•Rebuilding the country
•People’s movements
•loyal voters
•Ideological differences
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…to issues-based activism
•90’s and beyond:
•“death of ideology” – Parties become more similar
•The rise of individualism
•Voters less loyal
•Single issues replace party politics
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Media fragmentation
•Related to political changes
•Past: Everyone read the same paper
•Present: Several media sources, customization
•Parties need to be present in different channels
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• 2007: Early attempts with social media• Municipal elections• Youtube, blogs, Facebook• Criticized for poor efforts
• 2008: Obama’s social media success• Expectations that Norway would follow
• 2009: Social media integrated part of election
Parties’ social media history
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Methodology
• RQ: “What are the genres of political communication in social media?”
• Data collection: March-May 2009
• Interviews with political parties
• Observation of social media activities
• Genre theory as analytical tool
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Genres of organizational communication
•Genre: A way to sort communicative actions
•Characterized by• Form
• Content
• Functionality
• Identified by:• Asking why, where, when, who, what, how (5W1H)
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Findings – preferred genres
Dialogue Involvement Contribution
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Findings –genres in use
Dialogue Involvement Contribution
Call for action
Q&AGreeting
Appeal to party Policy comment
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Summary
• From party politics to single issues
• Media fragmentation and increasing political use of www
• 2009: Lots of resources spent, political genres evolving
• But mismatch between citizens and politicians expectations
• 2011 Will the communications gap shrink?
