Candidates' Social Media Profiles in the 2011 Local Elections in Norway

The next speaker in our ECREA 2012 panel is Eli Skogerbø, whose focus is on the use of social media in last year's local election campaign in Norway. Eli begins by pointing to Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg's personal Facebook page, which shares a substantial amount also of his private activities; such uses of social media by politicians have become relatively well-established by now.

Social media have become quite integrated into political communication processes, then, but how are such tools generally used – especially during campaigns? Eli's project examined the Facebook and Twitter profiles of some 32 leading candidates of the seven parties in the 2011 Norwegian local elections, across a number of towns. Motives for such social media use by politicians generally tend to include greater visibility, dialogue with voters, and agenda-setting during elections.

The project examined social media use by politicians before, during, and after the election campaign. It is obvious that there is increased activity during the election period, though this is considerably more pronounced on Facebook than on Twitter; interestingly, some candidates also set their pages to private again after the election.

What emerges from this is also that resources matter: candidates from the larger parties were considerably more active and visible, and attracted more attention; at the same time, marginal parties also put considerable effort into their activities in order to become more visible. Social media use remains a temporary activity for many candidates, focussed around the election; it's not yet embedded into everyday political processes. Attempts to set the electoral agenda through social media remain high-risk and low-gain; there are dangers in making missteps on social media as well.