Interacting with Whom?: Swedish Parliamentarians on Twitter during the 2014 Elections

Abstract

This article explores Swedish Parliamentarians' Twitter practices during the 2014 general elections. For individual candidates, the political party is important for positions within the party and on the ballot, especially in a party-centered democracy. A previous qualitative nethnographic research project during the previous elections in 2010, in which one campaigning politician was studied in-depth, found that her social media practices to a large extent were inward-facing, focusing on the own party network. But does this result resonate among all Swedish Parliamentarians? Specifically, the authors ask: is Twitter primarily used interactively, for intra-party communication, to interact with strategic voter groups or voters in general? By analyzing all Parliamentarians tweets two weeks up to the elections the authors conclude that retweeting was done within a party political network while @messaging was directed towards political opponents. Mass media journalists and editorial writers were important in Parliamentarians' Twitter practices, while so-called ordinary voters were more absent.