Everyday Experiences of Following British Members of Parliament on Social Media

• In Event: New Directions and Emerging Technologies

Abstract

The current global political climate demonstrate anti-political inclinations, with our democratic institutions and practices are experiencing more stresses and threats. One such practice in question has been the increasing use of social media by political actors and representatives. Politician’s use of social media has been studied academically for a quarter of a century (D’Alessio, 1996; Margolis and Resnick, 1996). However, attention paid to this topic has intensified in recent years due to it becoming a mainstream campaigning tool, used regularly by high-profile figures such as US President Donald Trump and being thought to have played a significant role in the 2017 UK general election (Chadwick, 2017). Existing scholarship has tended to place emphasis on supply-side of the elite – citizen equation. That is, politicians’ use of social media, the content of these posts and the potential electoral benefits of this type of campaigning. Less attention has been placed on the audiences of these posts, particularly outside of election campaigns. Furthermore, many studies in this area assess large-scale quantitative data, using them to draw links between certain online campaigning behaviours and voting behavior or political knowledge. Whilst insightful, such an approach cannot get at how social media impacts political engagement is integrated into quotidian life, and whether there are any benefits of political social media use for citizens, particularly in the face of democratic threats.

Building on existing literature, we argue that there is a pressing need for research that assesses how digital outputs by politicians are being perceived by citizen-audiences, and if and how this influences their subsequent political engagement and, additionally, participatory choices. This paper will focuses on one specific type of political behaviour – following a Member of Parliament (MP) on social media (here, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram). With destabilising pressures inflicted by Brexit and recent elections, its extensive national digital penetration, along with high social media adoption rate by MPs, the United Kingdom has been selected as our case study. Studying participants who are not already following MPs but regularly use social media, our paper will present on a unique, extensive and rich dataset by deploying surveys, media diaries and in-depth interviews that investigates ‘everyday’ online political communication during a particularly challenging period in British politics.

Authors

• Rosalynd Victoria Southern, University of Liverpool

• Nikki Shu Wen Soo, University of Sheffield