Do Social Media Empower Weaker Political Groups?

The final speaker in this ICA 2018 session is Juho Vesa, whose interest is whether social media activity serves to empower traditionally weaker political groups, such as NGOs. Media success for such groups may simply mean media access, or also a greater involvement in agenda-building through their media presence.

Larger groups can use their digital presences as a platform to feed directly into journalistic processes. Smaller groups, however, might need to generate broader interest on social media first, which may then attract media coverage; this follows a networked media logic and may mean that the status of the group initiating the campaign no longer matters quite as much. Specific message formats (images, audiovisual) may also make a difference here. (Larger groups may in fact find it more difficult to engender such social media activity.)

The study examined the activities of more than a thousand politically active membership associations in Finland over a period of one year, surveying these groups, tracking their media visibility (in two newspapers), and examining their social media presences.

Larger groups were especially successful in using their blogs to gain media access; smaller groups were able to use videos on social media to gain access to media agenda-building. Media access may ultimately be more important than agenda-building, however.