Liesbeth Hermans

Campaigning on Twitter: Microblogging and online social networking as campaign tools in the 2010 general elections in the Netherlands

The present study focuses on how candidates in the Dutch general elections of 2010 use Twitter, a popular microblogging and social networking service. Specifically the study focuses on explaining why some candidates are more likely to adopt Twitter, have larger networks, and show more reciprocation than other candidates. The innovation hypothesis, predicting that candidates from less established and smaller parties will use Twitter more extensively, is unsupported. This suggests that normalization of campaign practices is present on Twitter, not changing existing communication practices. The findings do show that being an early adopter of these new technologies is more effective than adoption shortly before Election Day.

Web campaigning in the 2009 European Parliament elections: A cross-national comparative analysis

Political communication has transformed drastically since the Internet made its way into the political arena. Political parties seem unable to do without a website or a social networking profile any longer, particularly in election campaigns. One of the many approaches to studying online political communication is measuring specific website features political parties, politicians and candidates utilize in order to engage visitors in the political process. Even though the analysis of online political communication has evolved over the years, website-feature analysis is still a valid instrument to study political actors. The explanations sought to understand website-feature utilization are found in earlier cross-national comparative studies (technological and human development) as well as new ones (political systems characteristics, ideology, participation and engagement). This study looks back on two prior cross-national comparative research projects and reports on a cross-national comparative analysis of 1026 candidate and party websites from 17 countries participating in the European Parliament (EP) elections of 2009. To analyze these data, some methodological improvements are made compared to earlier studies.

Personalization in e-campaigning: A cross-national comparison of personalization strategies used on candidate websites of 17 countries in EP elections 2009:

Candidate websites provide politicians with opportunities to present themselves in an individual way. To a greater or lesser extent politicians share personal information in their biographies and provide options to connect with citizens by putting links on their websites to their social networking sites (SNS). In this paper, although acting on different levels, both strategies are indicated as forms of personalization strategies used by politicians in their online communication. This cross-national study explores the use of these strategies on candidate websites in 17 countries during the elections for the European Parliament (EP) in June 2009. This is a comparative study of the personalized and individualized campaigning styles used during elections. Findings show that three general dimensions of personalization can be distinguished; ‘professional’, ‘home and family’ and ‘personal preferences’. While the first two dimensions show a higher level of use among candidates, the third dimension on private information is hardly used. Results show also that countries from Central Europe inform their citizens more about their professional and personal circumstances, and Mediterranean countries use personalization strategies the least. Furthermore, the overall findings show that SNS were not frequently used during the 2009 e-campaigning. West European countries use links to SNS more frequently than countries in other regions. In general these findings suggest cross-cultural differences regarding online personalized political campaigning.

Citizen Sources in the News: Above and Beyond the Vox Pop?

Both within journalism and academia it is argued that citizen voices should have a greater prominence in news to counterbalance the virtual monopoly of elite sources. This study extends previous studies – showing increased presence of citizens in news – by investigating relevant but unanswered questions, namely, (1) whether there has been a change in their prominence relative to elite and civil society sources and (2) in which capacity citizens have been present in the past two-and-a-half decades. Moreover, (3) citizens’ contribution to different story topics is explored. In this study, 1425 television news stories broadcast between 1990 and 2014 (N = 2413 sources) are analyzed. Results show that citizen sources became more prominent at the cost of elite sources. However, elite sources still remain the primary definers in news. Citizens do not get a more substantive, relevant voice as they are primarily used as vox pops, regardless of story topic.

Placing constructive journalism in context

This article describes how the social context of professional journalism has changed in the twenty-first century and why this has strengthened the need to redefine the function of journalism in this new era. Pivotal questions for journalism are: How to stay relevant for the public? How to redefine the public service function? How to deal with the increased competition? How to deal with a negative focus in the news that might offer people disillusion instead of hopeful perspectives? These questions are addressed within technological, social-cultural and economic developments that have a huge impact on the information supply. In this context, constructive journalism emerge. As a movement, it is indebted to civic journalism but takes it to the next level. Constructive journalism reconsiders the goals and values of professional journalism and cherishes a form of journalism that is public-oriented, solution-oriented, future-oriented and action-oriented, trying to avoid a bias towards negativity in the news. The break-through of the twenty-first century network model implies that journalism needs to move into a new direction, fostering cooperation, transparency and constructiveness.