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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.