Social media pose a variety of new opportunities, but also challenges to political parties. In the process of mediatization (e.g. Strömbäck 2008) parties and other political actors they have adapted to the logic of traditional mass media. Now they face different functional logics in these new digital
intermediation channels (such as virality, interactivity etc.). However, although political content accounts for only a marginal part of internet traffic (Hindman 2008), online communication has become a central part in the communication repertoires of political actors in Western mass democracies (and beyond). All Swiss parties that are represented in parliament, run their own
website and most of them have also begun to experiment with social media – defined as “web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share connections, and (3) view and
traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system” (Boyd & Ellison 2008:211).
This paper seeks to provide a comparative view on how Swiss parties deal with social media, how they implement it and how they use social media as campaign tools. It presents empirical data generated by a structural analysis of party websites, the official Facebook sites and Twitter feeds.
These social media sites were analyzed for resonance, update frequency and thematic clusters focusing on information, mobilization, participation and transparency (quantitative content analysis).
A weekly assessment of user numbers (group members, “likers” and followers) beginning in March 2011 illustrates the development of user resonance over a year that lead to national elections on
October 23, 2011. The descriptive data of social media activity and resonance is further enriched with data from semi-structured interviews with the heads of communication divisions from all parties.
It is shown that, although Swiss parties took up the challenge of social media and the user numbers are slowly on the rise, the overall resonance remains on a very low level. The data seems to sustain
the normalization hypothesis that “the use of any technology within politics reflects existing power relationships” (Lilleker et al. 2005: 197), as larger parties with more resources and voters are more able to generate effective communication and mobilize online than small and marginal parties. Also, thematic clustering of Facebook postings suggests that parties use social media as an additional channel to proliferate information, rather than rallying for grassroots participation, fundraising and
localized mobilization. While it was expected that the Swiss political system would hardly provide for online campaigning comparable to the Obama campaign 2008, Swiss parties are still struggling to master social media and its new media logic. The empirical data thus underline the relevance of a necessary theoretical debate that currently gains momentum: Mediatization does not only refer to the ability to adapt to mass media logic, but also to understand and implement the new logics of online-communication, in order to master public communication on the internet.
