The next ECREA 2012 session is on social media and crisis communication, and I have my final paper for this trip in this session as well. We start with Farida Vis, though, whose focus is on the use of Twitter by the London Metropolitan Police. This relates also to the emergence of data journalism, to the work to understand the positioning of Twitter in the wider mediasphere, and to the overall interest in the 'big data' question which has grown over the last year or so. All of this is related to issues of surveillance, user profiling, and other data …

The final paper in our ECREA 2012 panel is presented by Jennifer Wladarsch, who focusses on the recent resignation of the German federal president following a corruption scandal. Scandals represent a specific constellation of actors – the scandalised actor themselves, the scandalising actors who point out and report the scandal, and the general public who respond (with outrage) to the scandal.

Online communication broadens the range of potential participants in this process; audiences can participate in the scandalising by providing or reacting to information, for example. Jennifer and her colleagues examined this in the context of a scandal which revealed …

The next ECREA 2012 speakers are Hallvard Moe and Anders Larsson, who compare social media use in the Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish elections. They begin by noting that social media, and specific platforms, are deeply integrated with each other and with the wider mediasphere, and that this raises questions over the genres of use for each of these platforms, and the key actors which emerge in each case.

The three countries examined by the project are similar in their political systems and structures, and the project examined the use of Twitter during their campaigns; in particular, it explored the use …

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 …

The next paper at ECREA 2012 is presented by Jean-Marc Francony, who shifts our attention to the French presidential election and begins by noting the difficult process of shuttling between data analysis and theory-development in the context of political uses of social media. His approach is to consider the election as a media event, and the research builds on some 2 million tweets from the socialist primaries and the French presidential election. Specific live media events during this time were also investigated.

This research considers the Twittersphere as connecting individuals, organisations, and live events. The data include time-specific materials as …

Day two at ECREA 2012 starts with a panel on political communication using social media which I've had a hand in organising, and the panel begins with our paper on Twitter in the recent Queensland state elections. The slides are below – audio to follow... is also available now.

Political Networks on Twitter: Tweeting the Queensland State Election from Axel Bruns

The next speaker at ECREA 2012 is Sonia González Molina, whose interest is in the use of social media by the Catalan Road Service, the main source of official road information in Catalunya. She interviewed the responsible communication officers and analysed the organisation's Twitter and YouTube accounts as well as corporate documents.

Digital technology was introduced to the organisation in the 1990s, in order to enhance public communicate and develop new information services. This represents a process of convergence, and specifically enabled a greater amount of dialogue communication which – ideally – connects the organisation and its audiences, enables it …