From a Tweet to a Seat. Twitter, Media Visibility, and Electoral Support in the Last Luxembourg National Election

• In Event: CAT Interactive Papers #1

Abstract

In many ways Luxembourg constitutes an interesting test lab for the role of social media: There is only a one national TV Channel, the few newspapers are aligned to party positions. The parliament has only 60 seats. In such an environment, it is easy to track the social media activities of all candidates and parties. Adding to that, Luxembourg shows the highest degree of internet penetration in the European Union, more than 93% of the population are online.
Recent studies suggest, that internet activities in general and social media activities in specific foster electoral success. It seems that especially twitter is an effective tool to mobilize voters to vote for specific candidates against the order of party list. Likewise it is a channel of communication, that enables the candidates to bypass the journalistic gatekeepers, especially in the given media landscape, characterized by a substantial degree of political parallelism.

Author

• Reimar Zeh, U of Erlangen - Nuremberg