The final paper in this ECREA 2012 session is by Rosa van Santen, whose interest is in when journalists consider politicians' statements as newsworthy. In particular, this focusses on the parliamentary questions of MPs in France, the Netherlands, and Germany, and examines the content of the question (criticism, attribution of competence or incompetence, causal attribution), the actors involved (government or opposition, ministers or minor parliamentarians), and the preceding media coverage leading up to the question. Does critical questioning of government actors lead to more media attention, for example?

At the macro level, are there differences between the countries? In some …

The third speaker in this ECREA 2012 session (I'm afraid Blogsy swallowed my notes on John Downey's very interesting presentation on the BBC's coverage of the Arab Spring – sorry) is Ingrid Dahlen Rogstad, whose interest is in the role of Twitter in political agenda-setting in Norway. Can new mediaspheres challenge the dominance of conventional media gatekeeping practices? This is also a question about how new media and mainstream mediaspheres overlap, of course.

Ingrid engaged in a manual coding of mainstream and online media news as well as of the 1,500 most retweeted tweets during a specific time period; she …

The second keynote speaker in this ECREA 2012 plenary is Daya Thussu, whose interest is in the internationalisation of media studies, with specific reference to China and India. Where we are today in terms of global media is a mix of material of Hollywood-imported or -inspired programming (in music, television, films, news, sports, children's programming, and also in online media); the US continues to dominate the entertainment industry, in particular.

In news and current affairs, the US and UK form a duopoly of dominance; the world's top five media companies are based in the US. But this status quo beginning …

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 Maria Bakardjieva, who begins by noting the legacy of the public sphere concept – it has been enormously influential, especially also on central and eastern European scholars after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

In the current environment, an important question is the evaluation of the deliberative quality of online discussion spaces. Mainly, hopes for rational critical debate in such spaces have been disappointed: nothing close to the Habermasian ideal has been observed here, and it needs to be understood why this is the case.

But the approach in such studies has almost …