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?

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Thank you for listening!

marius.johannessen@uia.no