Jakob Svensson

The emergence of network media logic in political communication: A theoretical approach

In this article we propose a concept of network media logic in order to discuss how online social media platforms change political communication without resorting to technological determinism or normalization. We argue that social media platforms operate with a distinctly different logic from that of traditional mass media, though overlapping with it. This is leading to different ways of producing content, distributing information and using media. By discussing the differences between traditional mass media and social media platforms in terms of production, consumption and use, we carve out the central elements of network media logic – that is, the rules/format of communication on social media platforms – and some consequences for political communication.

Picturing the party: Instagram and party campaigning in the 2014 Swedish elections

This article explores Swedish parties’ activities on Instagram during the 2014 elections. Understanding party campaign communication as highly strategic, that is, communication to persuade and mobilize voters in order to win the elections, we ask whether Instagram was used to (1) broadcast campaign messages, (2) mobilize supporters, (3) manage the party’s image, and (4) amplify and complement other campaign material (i.e., hybrid campaign use). With this study, we follow previous studies on the use of digital communication platforms in the hands of campaigning political actors, but we direct our attention to a new platform. We conducted a content analysis of 220 party postings on Instagram, collected during the hot phase of the campaign. The result shows that the platform was mainly used for broadcasting rather than for mobilization. The image the parties were presenting leaned toward personalization with a strong presence of top candidates in their postings. Top candidates were primarily displayed in a political/professional context. Finally, half of the analyzed postings showed signs of hybridized campaign practices. The presented findings give a first glimpse on how political parties use and perform on Instagram.

Theorizing Citizenships in Late Modern ICT Societies

In this paper I define citizenship, participation and the political for better understanding and analyses of political participations in late modern ICT societies. I approach the topic from a comprehensive understanding of developments both in society and technology, how they mutually reinforce each other and are best understood in tandem. Discussions of citizenship are concerned with normative macro-perspectives of the good society and how it should be organized often departing from micro-empirical studies of how society and political participation are changing. This combination of macroand micro-perspectives together with its multiand interdisciplinary appeal makes citizenship ideal to approach from a transdisciplinary point of departure. In the paper I propose an understanding of citizenship as participation in political communities; ensembles of people addressing the organization of society and making sense of this address in a similar way. Citizenships are enacted in relation to the authority of a political community, an authority that streams out of the values and norms that are constructed and renegotiated through the participation of its members. Hence, it is both through participation that citizens and political communities are made. The paper ends with a proposal of how to categorize online participation and citizenship(s) in late modern ICT societies.

Activism and radical politics in the digital age Towards a typology

This article aims to develop a typology for evaluating different types of activism in the digital age, based on the ideal of radical democracy. Departing from this ideal, activism is approached in terms of processes of identification by establishing conflictual frontiers to outside others as either adversaries or enemies. On the basis of these discussions, we outline a typology of four kinds of activists, namely the salon activist, the contentious activist, the law-abiding activist and the Gandhian activist. The typology’s first axis, between antagonism and agonism, is derived from normative discussions in radical democracy concerning developing frontiers. The second axis, about readiness to engage in civil disobedience, is derived from a review of studies of different forms of online activism. The article concludes by suggesting that the different forms of political engagement online have to be taken into account when studying how online activism can contribute to social change.

Deliberation or what? A study of activist participation on Social Networking Sites

This paper addresses social networking sites (SNSs hereafter) and their promise of deliberation. Based on a (n)ethnograpic inspired case study of middle class activists in southern Stockholm, the q ...

Situated empowerment: Mobile phones practices among market women in Kampala

In this article we depart from studies on empowerment and its intersections with the informal economy and market women in the Global South and promises of the mobile phone in so-called developing regions. Conducting an explorative study among market women in Kampala, the aim is to examine what roles (if any) the mobile phone plays for them in terms of empowerment. Our findings resonate with studies from other parts of the world, suggesting that while pivotal for their business endeavors, mobile phone practices are also embedded in patriarchal structures. By discussing how these market women navigate the tensions between using the phone for their business and in relations to their partners, the article contributes a more nuanced and context-specific understanding of mobile phone practices and the empowerment of market women. We conclude the article by suggesting a situated approach to the study of empowerment.

Studying Organizations on Instagram

With the rise of social media platforms based on the sharing of pictures and videos, the question of how such platforms should be studied arises. Previous research on social media (content) has mainly focused on text (written words) and the rather text-based social media platforms Twitter and Facebook. Drawing on research in the fields of visual, political, and business communication, we introduce a methodological framework to study the fast-growing image-sharing service Instagram. This methodological framework was developed to study political parties’ Instagram accounts and tested by means of a study of Swedish political parties during the 2014 election campaign. In this article, we adapt the framework to also study other types of organizations active on Instagram by focusing on the following main questions: Do organizations only use Instagram to share one-way information, focusing on disseminating information and self-presentation? Or is Instagram used for two-way communication to establish and cultivate organization-public relationships? We introduce and discuss the coding of variables with respect to four clusters: the perception of the posting, image management, integration, and interactivity.

Interaction on Instagram?: Glimpses from the 2014 Swedish Elections

This paper directs attention to the use of Instagram by political parties in the Swedish national elections in 2014. It investigates how political parties made use of Instagram-a platform centered around images-when engaging in interaction with their followers on the platform. Therefore, the paper analysis Instagram images including their captions and comments posts that Swedish parties have published four weeks prior to Election Day. A particular focus is on the deliberative potential of Instagram. The results suggest that not much changes on Instagram compared to other social media platforms: Political parties hardly used Instagram to interact with their followers and the few interactions taking place on parties Instagram accounts did not contribute to the exchange of relevant and substantive information about politics i.e., deliberation. Interaction and deliberation is also not enhanced by the images.

Power and participation in digital late modernity: towards a network logic

Through theories of mediatization it is commonly understood that political institutions and participatory practices adapt to the logics of mass media. Today the overall media and communication landscape is becoming digitalized. Technological processes of digitalization evolve in tandem with sociocultural processes of reflexivity and individualization in late modernity. Thus politics and participation will be adapting to an increasingly digitalized and individualized media and communication landscape. This is a theoretical paper with an aim to critically analyze how contemporary media and communication landscape will influence practices of participation. Through the concept of network logic it is argued that users are disciplined into responsive and reflexive communication and practices of constant updating. As a result of this political participation will be more expressive and increasingly centered around identity negotiation.

Lurkers and the Fantasy of Persuasion in an Online Cultural Public Sphere

This contribution revolves around political discussions in forum discussion threads on the Swedish online LGBTQ community platform, Qruiser. Political discussions in these online forum threads are studied as cultural participation in an online cultural public sphere. The specific question the chapter seeks to answer is what role so-called lurkers play for active participants’ meaning-making practices. Lurkers could be understood as a fantasy, an imagined audience willing to listen and be persuaded by active participants’ arguments. However, applying a Lacan inspired analytical framework, the chapter will conclude that the fantasy is not so much about the lurkers themselves (that may be imagined or just invisible), but the belief in persuasion. Hence, the answer to the question of why users participate in verbal battles with each other online would be because they are driven by a fantasy of persuasion as a way to cope with the lack of enjoyment in terms of them being split from a harmonious world of political unity.