Shay Carl, American vlogger and YouTube personality. Because users of these platforms probably feel better represented by members of parliament who are of a similar age and engage in similar social media behavior, we expect that younger members of parliament from urban regions attract a larger followership. Comparing individual popularity on old and new media, SAGE Publications Ltd. Manuscript content on this site is licensed under Creative Commons Licenses, Political Actors’ Success on Social Media, Impediments to Success on Free Social Media Platforms. Furthermore, those who represent citizens from an urban region also become popular on these platforms. Kovic, M., Rauchfleisch, A., Metag, J., Caspar, C., Szenogrady, J. For example, about 50% of the population of Switzerland use Facebook, and about 17% use Twitter passively and about 6% actively (Latzer, Büchi, & Just, 2015). They integrate these remarks about the potential of the Internet and social media, the so-called cyber-rhetoric (Jungherr, 2016; Kreiss, 2011; Stromer-Galley, 2014), into their communication. This site uses cookies. Facebook strategy versus practice, Styles of social media campaigning and influence in a hybrid political communication system, Online political mobilization from the advocacy group’s perspective: Looking beyond clicktivism, Normalisierter Erfolg? In addition to these challenges, political actors do not access social media platforms on an equal footing. Of the right-leaning parties, Natalie Rickli (13,625, SVP) and Christoph Mörgeli (9,270, SVP) have built up large followerships on Twitter. Every dot represents a member of parliament, grouped by party affiliation. Whereas according to the mass media logic politicians’ messages must overcome gatekeepers to reach an audience, according to the network media logic politicians can directly disseminate their information to partisan citizens (Klinger & Svensson, 2015). Our case study focuses on political actors in Switzerland, which serves as an ideal case for studying success on social media platforms in a hybrid media system (Chadwick, 2013) due to its media and political plurality (246 members of parliament from 11 parties in 2015, for media plurality see Appendix A). Again, Oskar Freysinger (672.7, SVP) leads the chart, followed by Natalie Rickli (328.9, SVP) and Lukas Reimann (128.1, SVP). Although the investigation was a single country study on Switzerland, our results are supported by findings from other countries: For example, van Aelst, van Erkel, D’heer and Harder (2016) found for politicians in Belgium a similar relationship between the size of the Twitter and the media coverage they receive. MMS and MNNG modify DNA by adding methyl groups to a number of nucleophilic sites … In addition, each mention in a news article increases the number of followers by 0.1% (Exp(B) = 1.001, SE = 0.000, p < .001, support for H2 on Twitter). Yet, Samuel-Azran, Yarchi, and Wolfsfeld (2015) who compared challengers with incumbent political leaders from Israel found equally large followerships on Facebook indicating equalization opportunities. Original file ‎(942 × 943 pixels, file size: 476 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg). Through these broader networks, political actors’ messages can reach people who do not follow politics attentively (Vaccari, 2016). Members of _ can log in with their society credentials below, Tobias R. Keller and Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw, This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (. Among the exceptional performers are not only political actors from the largest right-leaning party: Cédric Wermuth of the left-leaning party, Social Democratic Party of Switzerland (SP; 9,359) and the leader of the centrist party, Christian Democratic People’s Party of Switzerland (CVP), Filippo Lombardi (6,700) also reach many citizens. Fax: (732) 651-7135. A quantitative assessment of the permanent campaign on Facebook, ‘Of course we are on Facebook’: Use and non-use of social media among Swedish and Norwegian politicians, Internet applications and their use in Switzerland 2015: Report from the World Internet Project-Switzerland 2015, Personalization, social media, and voting: Effects of candidate self-personalization on vote intention, List of members of the National Council. Ahmed Mehairi Process and Safety Projects Engineer. Path analysis of Swiss politicians’ characteristics predicting success on Twitter. Wikimedia OTRS ticket number. Figure 1. You can be signed in via any or all of the methods shown below at the same time. Email: Andrew Graupe Software Developer. Some of the discrepancies between results may be due to the use of different indicators for personal and structural advantages and different dependent variables (Strandberg, 2008, 2013). Hence, following these observations and according to the network media logic (Klinger & Svensson, 2015), the success of political actors’ communication on social media platforms should be defined not by digital debates, but by the size of their followership (e.g., fans and followers) and the number of reactions their social media actions receive (e.g., likes and retweets). List of women in the parliament, The agenda-building function of political tweets, R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Jarod Thomas Albert, Alexander James Archambeault, Maddison Rae Arpano, William Dennis Asselin, Joanne G Badran, Madison Evelyn Bergeron, Elizabeth Dorothy Bertrand, Rina Alise Bottari, Jacob Elija… List of members of the Council of States. Hence, future studies should dig deeper and analyze whether these politicians use Facebook ads to raise their visibility: They may simply have shifted from paying for traditional to digital ads. The ideology of political actors is ranked on a scale from −10.0 (left) to +10.0 (right) based on Schoenenberger (2014). Second, these reactions inform social media users about which of their friends on these platforms share similar political opinions; they might be invited to also follow certain political actors. My Account; FAQ; About; Submit Research; Home Third, social media platforms lower the transaction costs and thus facilitate micro-donations, through which political actors sometimes raise millions; social cues—such as the number of people who have already donated—influence whether others also donate (Margetts et al., 2016). Jack Hannahan, American baseball infielder. August 1, 1967 (Tuesday). Despite the growing importance of permanent campaigning (Norris, 2003), these periods between elections have mostly been neglected in research (Vaccari, 2016). Join Facebook to connect with Michael Hauser and others you may know. Thus, a large and active followership might serve as an alternative to traditional forms of organization through party membership. Path analysis of Swiss politicians’ characteristics predicting success on Facebook. Nach dem Studium arbeitete sie in der Verwaltung von St. Ga… Users are more likely to react to politicians who are structurally disadvantaged in terms of key positions (b = −.209, SEM = 0.237, p = .043) and a low vote share (b = −.202, SEM = 0.018, p = .062), but who receive a lot of media coverage (b = .470, SEM = 0.001, p = .001). Through the lens of network media logic (Klinger & Svensson, 2015), we argue that the premise for all these beneficial outcomes is a large digital followership (e.g., fans or followers) that actively reacts to politicians’ public messages (e.g., likes or retweets) and thus enables messages to spread through the network. Michael Hauser is on Facebook. Then we present our results for the two platforms, Facebook and Twitter. Phone: (732) 613-6600. The two platform-specific variables are adoption, which represents the number of days since the account was created and the first post was published, and activity, which describes the number of posts per day during the legislative period. Nathan John Dlugos, Biological Sciences with Physical Sciences Minor, Edmonton ... Jung Eun Lim, Biological Sciences with Physical Sciences … After identifying possible impediments to their success on these platforms, we describe the special case of Switzerland, our data set, and the methods. Their posts might set the agenda of traditional media and thus improve visibility (Parmelee, 2014); their performance can attract new party members, substituting for the general decline in party membership (Gibson, Greffet, & Cantijoch, 2016); and the lowered transaction costs on these platforms might facilitate micro-donations through which political actors can raise millions (Margetts, John, Hale, & Yasseri, 2016). https://www.parlament.ch/sitecollectionimages/profil/original/2762.jpg, https://ticket.wikimedia.org/otrs/index.pl?Action=AgentTicketZoom&TicketNumber=2016030410008521, Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by nationality/Australia, Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by nationality/Switzerland, Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by occupation/Politicians, Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/Missing articles by occupation/Politicians - Switzerland, Wikipedia:Wikiproyecto:Mujeres/Artículos faltantes/Mujeres por nacionalidad/Australia, Wikiproyecto:Mujeres/Artículos faltantes/Políticas Suiza, Wikiproyecto:Mujeres/Artículos faltantes/Políticas, Liste des membres du Conseil national suisse (2019-2023), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jacqueline_Badran_(2018,_cropped).jpg. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click on download. bacilla stephie b. bacilla ivica bacina claudio bacinello daniel bacinello michael bacinello robert bacinello teresa bacinello bacino andrea s s bacino john b bacinskas john g bacinskas bacio david a baciocco david k baciocco jacqueline a baciocco kerrie a baciocco gary v baciuska laura j baciuska meghan l baciuska kim back-soon back bat m back bruno back cathy back david h back erin p back garry l back … 2016030410008521. Politicians, who are active in parliament, represent urban regions and receive substantial amounts of traditional media coverage also have larger digital followerships on both platforms. Since for many political actors being active on social media platforms has become a necessary (although not sufficient) condition for political success (van Dijck, 2013), they have gained knowledge about how social media platforms work and how to generate digital reactions. Yong-Tae Jeong, Yong Deuk Kim, Young-Mi Jung, Dong-Chan Park, Dong-Sub Lee, Sae-Kwang Ku, Xian Li, Yue Lu, Guang Hsuan Chao, Keuk-Jun Kim, Jai-Youl Lee, Moon-Chang Baek, Wonku Kang, Seung-Lark Hwang, Hyeun Wook Chang, Low Molecular Weight Fucoidan Improves Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress-Reduced Insulin Sensitivity through AMP-Activated Protein Kinase Activation in L6 Myotubes and … Receiving a lot of “likes” can be part of a wider hybrid campaigning strategy that involves many additional communication tools (Karpf, 2010), and the “like” itself is not the end goal: It must be seen as part of an ongoing political process (Gerlitz & Helmond, 2013). Thus, platforms with a strong algorithmic influence—such as Facebook—are powerful actors. Therefore, we propose a set of personal and structural characteristics to systemize this field of research: Personal characteristics such as age, gender, education, party affiliation, and parliamentary activity are important predictors of platform adoption and activity, but structural characteristics such as incumbency, key position, vote percentage, media coverage, and financial power are important for interpreting results in terms of normalization and equalization (Keller & Kleinen-von Königslöw, in press). Again, this can be explained by the news-like character and the motivation of users to receive news and live events (Stieglitz & Dang-Xuan, 2012). English. Confirming our first hypothesis, younger politicians who actively submit parliamentary proposals are more popular on social media platforms, presumably because users expect politicians to be engaged, and active politicians are more interesting to follow. In addition, we assume that politicians who actively submit parliamentary proposals win more fans and followers on these platforms since they can report on their parliamentary efforts, which might help explain why many users follow politicians on these platforms. Please check you selected the correct society from the list and entered the user name and password you use to log in to your society website. Hence, political actors are in constant competition for attention. Email: Normalized Use—But Also Normalized Success? Fear and Hope, Bitter and Sweet: Emotion Sharing of Cancer Community on Twitter. The variables for the structural advantages incumbency, key positions, and vote percentage were collected via the official website of the Swiss Parliament (Bundesamt für Statistik, 2015; Parlamentsdienste, 2015). In contrast to our expectations, none of the social media activity characteristics affects the number of reactions on Facebook (rejects H3 for Facebook). The correspondence is available to trusted volunteers as ticket #2016030410008521. Der Einfluss struktureller Vorteile von Schweizer Parlamentsmitgliedern und Parteien auf ihren Erfolg auf Facebook und Twitter, Normalized success? This product could help you, Accessing resources off campus can be a challenge. Dort engagierte sie sich auch in der umweltökonomischen Studenteninitiative OIKOS. There are multiple options for users to provide feedback: likes, comments, retweets, favorites, and so on. Few are able to build their own social network sites like “myBarackObama.com.” Yet, political actors face at least three general challenges in using these free platforms compared with building their own proprietary platform. Political actors’ impact on social media depends heavily on their followership, which reacts to (and spreads) their messages. Five Desired Outcomes of a Large and Active Digital Followership on Social Media Platforms. Well-funded political actors and those with a strong presence in traditional media dominate digital political communication flows. Future studies should address the interplay between offline and online success: Does social media communication lead to success offline, which in turn leads to success online again? We use path analysis to examine a unique data set of the social media communication of Swiss parliamentarians between 5 December 2011 and 15 March 2015 and their personal, structural, and social media characteristics. Due to stricter data sharing laws and stronger reservations concerning privacy outside the United States, it is almost impossible to confirm the success of micro-targeting attempts with data not provided by the platform itself, that is, with independent data on concrete voting behavior. The 63 Facebook accounts analyzed have an average digital followership of 2,106 (SD = 529, median = 286). This correspondence has been reviewed by an OTRS member and stored in our permission archive. Previous empirical studies have shown that political actors may benefit from social media communication in other ways. A ranking of parliamentary activity for each political actor was retrieved from Parlamentsdienste (2015) and the degree of urbanization of their constituency from BADAC (2001). A survey of Swiss political actors showed that Facebook and Twitter are of growing importance (Brändli & Wassmer, 2014), for example, political actors’ adoption rates of Twitter steadily rose from 2.5% in 2009 to 13.5% in 2011 to 34% in 2013 (Rauchfleisch & Metag, 2016, p. 2422). For example, whereas a politician’s age or key position might influence the one-time decision of a citizen to “like” or “follow” her on the platform, for daily decisions of which posts or tweets to like or retweet, social media characteristics such as adoption date and activity are more likely to predict the number of reactions politicians receive. Sign in here to access free tools such as favourites and alerts, or to access personal subscriptions, If you have access to journal content via a university, library or employer, sign in here, Research off-campus without worrying about access issues. Three personal characteristics increased politicians’ chances of attracting a larger digital followership. We then conduct a path analysis based on negative binomial and multiple linear regression analysis (for additional information, see Appendix B) to find out which characteristics lead to a larger digital followership and more digital reactions in line with our proposed hypotheses. Does Campaigning on Social Media Make a Difference? LUNENBURG — Lunenburg High School held graduation ceremonies June 1 at the school. The country’s political system further encourages permanent campaigning (Norris, 2003) and permanent contact between political actors and the citizenry: Swiss citizens are invited to participate in direct democracy at the ballot box multiple times a year (e.g., four times in 2016). This image is from the web site of the Swiss Federal Assembly, the parliament of Switzerland. Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw (PhD, Jacobs University Bremen), is a professor of communication studies, digital communication, and sustainability at the University of Hamburg, Germany. We start our article with discussing what political actors’ success on social media means from the perspective of network media logic (Klinger & Svensson, 2015) and why political actors benefit from a larger digital followership which actively reacts to their social media contributions. Linear regression analyses for DV Reactions (adjusted R2 = .858): Only significant standardized beta coefficients are displayed. Available, The special case of Switzerland: Swiss politicians on Twitter, Equalization versus normalization: Facebook and the 2013 Israeli elections, Political communication and influence through microblogging: An empirical analysis of sentiment in Twitter messages and retweet behavior, Proceedings of the 45th Hawaii International Conference on System Science (HICSS), Online electoral competition in different settings, A social media revolution or just a case of history repeating itself? Sascha Weber is on Facebook. Whereas right-leaning accounts dominate on Facebook, in the Twittersphere political actors from the left have a larger digital followership: Cédric Wermuth (SP) had the most with 25,105 followers, followed by SP Party leader Christian Levrat (12,650), Balthasar Glättli (10,768, Green Party), Jacqueline Badran (8,937, SP), Bastien Girod (8,589, Green Party), and Pascale Bruderer (8,581, SP). Thus, politicians’ success on social media depends on their personal background, political activity, and media coverage, and also their followership and the platform.