The adapted position: preparing political contents for a hybrid media environment

Abstract

In today’s hybrid media environment, political representatives are expected to deliver their programmatic positions in multiple yet coherent versions. To synchronize these programmatic contents with an accelerated and fragmented media system, they are subjected to what I call ‘adaptation work’. Using ethnographic insights gathered at a party’s headquarter in the Austrian national parliament, the article shows that adaptation work happens in interaction between a digital infrastructure (intranet technology, specific documents) and a writing team (knowledge managers, staff advisers, assistants). This sociomaterial distribution enables practices for archiving and sharing internal knowledge on party positions as well as literary strategies of adjusting positions to different recipients and media. At the same time, adapted positions deliberately shade the internal infrastructure and experts involved in their preparation in order to present representatives as the ones to be held accountable for positions.

Constitutive invisibility: Exploring the work of staff advisers in political position-making

“…The original goal of our research was to study political discourse work. This initial motive developed into a focus on what we call ‘career paths of positions-in-the-making’ (see Laube, 2020; Laube et al, 2017; Scheffer, 2015a). Due to the choice of offices, we came to study how oppositional factions belonging to the same party make positions.…”

Análisis del aumento de seguidores y de la presencia multiplataforma de la clase política en Facebook, Twitter e Instagram en campañas electorales (2011-2019)

“…Sin embargo, en los países con sistemas de representación proporcional y listas cerradas como es el caso de España, los contenidos publicados en campaña por las personas candidatas en sus perfiles sociales suelen tener como objetivo promocionar el partido con el que concurren a los comicios. Por ello, es fácil configurar un discurso fragmentado, adaptado a cada candidatura y dependiente de la plataforma y del público al que se dirijan (Laube, 2020).…”

Material Practices of Ethnographic Presence

“…My reflexive analysis of the material making of ethnographic presence builds on empirical data from three different ethnographic studies on the use of digital media in work. 2 The field sites include a financial trading room (Laube 2017, 2019), a call-center office (Egger de Campo and Laube 2008), and a political party’s network of back offices in parliament (Laube 2020; Laube, Schank, and Scheffer 2020). The studies had very different starting points regarding my presence as an observant participant.…”