What is it about?
This article investigates whether politicians engagement in blogging has the potential to streanthen the communication between representatives and citizens. Primarily earlier research on political blogging has focused on the role of blogs in electoral campaigns and seen them as tools used by politicians to attract voters, but do blogs offer channels for communication that make politicians more accountable, willing to listen and connected to the people they represent?
Featured Image
Why is it important?
While the majority of politicians use blogs in a way that is not challangeing or innovating traditional ways of communication between citizens and representatives, there are clear pioneers among blogging politicians inventing new forms of representation and political communication as blogs are used to incerase accountability, listening to citizens views and creating stronger connections between citizens and representatives. Understanding how and why such practicies of representation and political communication occur is important for producing new knowledge on how information technology and social media can be used to further develop democratic representation.
Perspectives
For me conducting empirical research on how the internet and social media are used by political actors is important in order to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of these phenomena. The public debate on these issues is characterized by a battle between over-optimistic and skeptic positions that are seldom anchored in the empirical reality. As information and communication technologies are become a more dominant part of our lives and our societies we need to better understand the mechanisms that determine what consequences (good and bad) they produce.
Dr Martin Karlsson
Örebro University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The political blog space: A new arena for political representation?, New Media & Society, July 2014, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1461444814543990.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
