Campaigning and Contestation: Comments on Politicians' Facebook
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SMSXXX10.1177/2056305115622480Social Media + SocietySchwartz 622480research-article2015 SI: Social Media Public Space Social Media + Society July-December 2015: 1 –11 Campaigning and contestation: © The Author(s) 2015 DOI: 10.1177/2056305115622480 Comments on politicians’ Facebook sms.sagepub.com pages during the 2011 Danish general election campaign Sander Andreas Schwartz Abstract This article is a critical study of the Facebook pages of politicians as public spheres using Dahlberg’s notion of contestation. A method is implemented inspired by qualitative content analysis and including focus groups in order to study citizen comments on eight main political candidates’ Facebook pages during the 2011 Danish election campaign. An analytical framework is presented that conceptualizes the particular platform as a dinner party, with a dinner table, a host, and the invited guests. The dinner party exhibits the interplay between these elements and how they limit the option of contesting the dominating discourse in favor of a supportive marketing logic. Keywords election campaign, politics, Facebook, contestation, public sphere Introduction Politicians are experiencing a crisis of support in most Stanyer, 2012). Politicians were clearly aware of the poten- Western democracies. The number of people who vote in tial benefits of having a Facebook page during the Danish national elections is in decline (Organisation for Economic general election in 2011. It was by far the most popular social Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2011), and so is the media platform, if not the most popular online presence of loyalty toward traditional political parties (Coleman & political candidates (Hoff, Linaa Jensen, Klastrup, Schwartz, Blumler, 2009; Dahlgren, 2009). The decline of loyal voters & Brügger, 2013; Skovsgaard & Van Dalen, 2013). The creates an incentive for new political marketing strategies in mainstream media in Denmark monitored political activity order to reconnect with citizens and win over voters during on Facebook closely. For example, the Danish Broadcasting election campaigns. Politicians must seek out citizens in Organization (DR) had a daily TV slot and a webpage dedi- spaces that are traditionally associated with the private cated to social media activity by politicians. sphere because the citizens are withdrawing from the politi- Facebook has gained a central position in the overall cal sphere. Facebook pages are obvious tools for political Danish media ecology, especially during elections. For poli- marketing directly to the citizen, but they could simultane- ticians, this platform is a way to circumvent the traditional ously provide citizens with a new space to reconnect with media gatekeepers, and for the mass media, it is an easy politics through critical public debate. source to gather political statements and vox populi. The Facebook has been widely adopted in most Western coun- interactive nature of the Facebook page allows citizens to tries, including Denmark where more than 60% of the popu- engage with politicians through public comments. It is clear lation now has an active profile (Statistics Denmark, 2014). that Facebook has an impact on the transformation of public This social media platform allows candidates to connect with citizens directly and circumvent traditional mass media gate- IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark keepers. The relation enhances the focus on individual candi- Corresponding Author: dates over the political party, which corresponds with an Sander Andreas Schwartz, IT University of Copenhagen, Rued overall personalization of politics (Enli & Skogerbø, 2013; Langgaardsvej 7, Copenhagen 2300, Denmark. Skovsgaard & Van Dalen, 2013; Van Aelst, Scheafer, & Email: [email protected] Creative Commons Non Commercial CC-BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub. com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). 2 Social Media + Society space by the attention from mass media and politicians alone. groups where people already agree with you, so-called However, few studies have looked at the comment section of echo chambers or digital enclaves. these pages in order to understand the significance of this Research so far on online political debate suggests that content. In this article, I present an analysis inspired by pub- people are not trying to avoid opposing opinions online lic sphere theory that critically examines comments on (Stromer-Galley & Muhlberger, 2009). Even so, discursive Facebook pages. In particular, I examine whether there is hegemony is a general issue in any cultural context, and room for political contestation on public pages of Danish top political partisans in particular are more likely to interact politicians during the general election of 2011. with likeminded peers (Adamic & Glance, 2005; Hargittai, Gallo, & Kane, 2007; Hindman, 2008; Mutz, 2006). The Public Sphere and the Importance What Is a Social Media Platform? of Contestation To live together in the world means essentially that a world of The convergence of institutional politics with the personal things is between those who have it in common, as a table is sphere on Facebook is problematic from a critical theoretical located between those who sit around it; the world like every perspective, as it is an example of the system colonizing the in-between, relates and separates men at the same time. (Arendt, lifeworld (Habermas, 1984). According to Habermas, the 1958/1998, p. 52) market and state (system) are increasingly interfering with the private sphere (lifeworld), which results in depoliticiza- Hannah Arendt’s table metaphor provides us with a useful tion of and control over citizens. Although this is a critical reminder that human interaction is always mediated by interpretation, there is no denying that the main incentive for something in-between, something that enables us to connect candidates to enter Facebook is strategic, especially during and communicate in a particular way, while it also creates a election campaigns. Although the presence of political can- distance between us by being in-the-way. We should con- didates on Facebook has a democratic potential (Utz, 2009), sider this duality when we study mediated platforms for the interactive features are often rather interaction-as-prod- debate and keep in mind that any context will always afford uct than interaction-as-process (Stromer-Galley, 2004). and constrain our ability to connect, communicate, and delib- According to Stromer-Galley, the early presence of politi- erate. It is wrong to assume that online technology is con- cians online was mostly exhibiting a facade of interaction straining the social, in contrast to an offline world where (Stromer-Galley, 2000), rather than a genuine attempt to use people can interact and speak freely. Arendt’s metaphor citizen interaction in further democratic process. New stud- reminds us that mutual discourse between people always ies of social media campaigns are mostly leaning toward contains, and in fact requires, a table. In my analysis, I chose politics as usual, despite a wide adoption of social media to view the social media platform Facebook as such a meta- platforms, such as Facebook, by the politicians (Jackson & phorical table. Lilleker, 2009; Skovsgaard & Van Dalen, 2013; Strandberg, A platform is defined as a flat and raised surface,1 sug- 2013). gesting neutrality, access, and openness. Alternatively, a The public sphere theory by Habermas (1992) has been platform can be understood as something separate, remote, a popular way to evaluate political debate online (Dahlberg, and disconnected. In much the same way, one could argue 2001). However, many have criticized the public sphere that Facebook is one connected semi-public network, or one theory based on its early conception without taking into could argue that it is instead multiple, semi-private, and account how the theory has adapted over the years gated communities.2 The reality is that Facebook has devel- (Dahlberg, 2014; Lunt & Livingstone, 2013). Dahlberg oped into a myriad of spaces or sub-platforms, which makes suggests that we need an academic re-radicalization of the it increasingly important for researchers to analyze the space public sphere theory in line with the original intention. He as multiple and particular contexts. suggests that scholars interested in public sphere theory The word platform itself has been used to define anything should focus less on rational debate and consensus, but from concrete architectural constructions, digital systems, to instead focus on discourse and contestation (Dahlberg, figurative political spaces (Gillespie, 2010). According to 2007). Dahlberg introduces post-Marxist theory by Mouffe. Braun and Gillespie, social media companies are using this Mouffe (2005) argues that the focus on consensus in dis- word to obscure the complicated power relation between the cussion is downplaying the power relations that will user and the provider of social media (Braun & Gillespie, always be a part of social interactions. In her view, contes- 2011). Describing social media as platforms suggests that it is tation of the dominating discourse needs to be incorpo- an open space, where anyone can bring anything