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Article published In: Re/constructing Politics Through Social & Online Media: Discourses, ideologies, and mediated political practices
Edited by Michał Krzyżanowski and Joshua A. Tucker
[Journal of Language and Politics 17:2] 2018
► pp. 305–323

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Social media and political communication

Innovation and normalisation in parallel

ORCiD logo with link | Örebro University
 | Örebro University
Published online: 30 November 2017
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.17006.kar
Abstract
As the Internet has come to play a greater role in politics, there has been a growing scholarly interest in how digital and social media are changing politics. The competition between the innovation and normalization hypotheses has been at the center of the debate. This article sets out to identify evidence of innovation and normalization in terms of how politicians communicate in- and the level of influence they are attaining within the political blogosphere. The analyses conducted show paradoxical results as we find that those groups of politicians who are utilizing political communication in the blogosphere in more innovative and progressive ways – mirroring the hopes and expectations about how social media might influence politicians and political communication – have weaker positions within the blog network compared to other politicians.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical discussion
    • 2.1Political communication and the internet
    • 2.2Individualism and political parties
    • 2.3Gender and political communication
  • 3.Data and methodology
    • 3.1Measurements
      • Dependent variables
      • Independent variables
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Who blogs?
    • 4.2Political representatives’ use of social media
    • 4.3Understanding power in the political blogosphere
  • 5.Discussion
  • Note
  • References
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