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Social Media on Local Party Level-Concerning the use of Social Media by the Local Associations of the Parties in Germany

Cyber Politics
Media
Political Parties
Internet
Social Media

Abstract

In recent past, social media has induced a substantial change in political communication correlating with the increase in internet usage. Presently, the use of social media is seen as an important element of organization within a modern party. This is why the political parties in Germany are discussing the need to further digitalize their communication structures. With the increasing importance of social media, it is surprising that there is neither research on the extent of social media usage on the local party level, nor about the factors that influence the usage. Hence the research question is: Why and to what extent are the local associations of the major German parties using social media? This research project will focus on the use of social media. The first step in this research project is building a theoretic model, which is inspired by the “neo institutional theory” and the “influence-of-presumed-media-influence approach”. Important factors of those theories are the perception of external institutional demands regarding the use of online media and the presumed influence of (social) media. The second step of the research project will be an empirical examination of the model. The necessary data will be gathered through an online-survey in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. This quantitative survey will be based on a questionnaire devised for the local party leaders.