Different Governments, Different Approaches: Political Participation in the Online Sphere

A political communications approach can provide a rich perspective for understanding new democratic innovations aimed at fostering political participation. While much research in the field of political communications has focused on the efforts of political parties to increase participation using online digital tools, there has been little research on the communications practices of governments in engaging with citizens (Sanders, Canel, & Holtz-Bacha, 2011). There are few comparative studies on how governments are using online communications to engage with citizens and how these compare in different political contexts. The research questions at the centre of this study are how do governments organisations in Germany and Great Britain use websites and social media pages to engage with citizens? And how can differences in approach be explained by differences in political context? There is an increasing need to understand communications within the political cultures in which they are set. While researchers have found that governments treat websites and social media as simply another channel for information distribution (Chadwick, 2011; Jackson & Lilleker, 2004), these studies are often single country studies. Instead we believe that a comparative approach can shed light and explain important differences in approach to political participation and engagement. We empirically examined the online communications of executive government organisations in Germany (n=17) and Great Britain (n=27). We carried out an online content analysis of the websites (n=44), Facebook (n=29), Twitter (n=50) and YouTube (n=31) pages in the two countries. This included the communications of the government, the ministries, the cabinet/chancellor’s Office, central government communications offices, and the individual pages of individual ministers. In order to fully capture the changes taking place online, we incorporated a broad theoretical perspective allowing for different understandings of political participation online. Our empirical findings show that both countries incorporate a number of participatory features on their websites, but they take quite different approaches to participation, reflecting differences in political communications culture. This can also be seen in the use of social media. Government organisations are highly active on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Twitter is the most used social media channel; 82% of organisations in Great Britain, and 94% in Germany. In both countries, over half of the organisations on Twitter responded to citizens, but they responded very rarely and made few attempts at encouraging participation. There were some encouraging examples within Germany where there was a high level of direct engagement by a number of organisations on Facebook (a mean response rate of 79 posts in two weeks), and also by a number of individual ministers on Twitter. Literature Chadwick, A. (2011). The Hybrid Media System: Politics and Power: Oxford University Press. Jackson, N. A., & Lilleker, D. G. (2004). Just Public Relations or an Attempt at Interaction? European Journal of Communication, 19, 507–533. Sanders, K., Canel, M. J., & Holtz-Bacha, C. (2011). Communicating Governments A Three-Country Comparison of How Governments Communicate with Citizens. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 16, 523-547.