The special case of Switzerland: Swiss politicians on Twitter

Abstract

We analyse the use of Twitter in political communication in Switzerland because, in comparison with other democracies, Switzerland with its strong federalism, fragmented party system, small country size and semi-professional politicians can be seen as the least-likely critical case, thus creating unique conditions for the use of social media. The study investigates the individual characteristics of Swiss Members of Parliament that could influence social media usage. Thus, the study contributes to the debate about equalization and normalization with respect to Twitter as a relevant microblogging channel for political communication and to the significance of country-specific conditions for the adoption of innovations in political online communication. The study explains the shift from equalization towards normalization with the diffusion of innovations theory.

What drives interaction in political actors’ Facebook posts? Profile and content predictors of user engagement and political actors’ reactions

“…The study, however, was conducted in an electoral context, in which larger parties may have been especially active in using their resources to advertise political posts. In contrast to this finding, theories of equalization suggest that smaller parties are more likely to utilize SNS channels to compensate for financial disadvantages offline (Rauchfleisch & Metag, 2016). To investigate these two competing assumptions, we assigned each actor (i.e., candidate or party page) in our sample with the vote share of the political party the actor belonged to.…”

Journalists’ Use of Political Tweets

“…Twitter constitutes one of these online sources and appears to be one of the most important ones with regard to our research question as politicians and journalists interact closely on Twitter (Ausserhofer and Maireder 2013;Verweij 2012). For politicians, Twitter is an attractive channel of communication as they can interact with citizens directly, overcome the traditional gatekeeping function of mass media, and reach a potentially large electorate (Marcinkowski and Metag, 2014;Rauchfleisch and Metag 2016). Also, many journalists in Western countries have a Twitter account and use it quite actively (English 2014;Hedman 2014;Vis 2013).…”

“…While usually professional political PR is regarded in agenda-building research as a politicians' means to influence the media agenda (Gandy 1982) many Swiss politicians do not have these means at their disposal. Therefore, Twitter is a costefficient way to disseminate their political views or information about their political activities and many of the members of the federal assembly use Twitter (Rauchfleisch and Metag, 2016). Although there are no figures on how many of the Swiss journalists use Twitter a study shows that journalists made up one of the largest groups among the followers of politicians on Twitter in Switzerland in 2013 (Rauchfleisch and Metag, 2016).…”

A tale of three tribes: UK MPs, Twitter and the EU Referendum campaign1

“…The limited empirical evidence on parliamentary social media networks, however, tends to bear the homophily assertion out. Although Miller 2015found some evidence for cross party connections forming in the UK, research indicate that social media networks are highly reflective of their political systems and party environments (Gibson & Ward, 2009Thamm & Bleier, 2013;Hsu & Park, 2012;Rauchfleisch & Metag 2016). Hence, in adversarial party systems like the UK, with a relatively limited numbers of parliamentary parties, social media networks between MPs seemingly mirror offline polarization (NESTA, 2015).…”