Please Like, Comment and Share our Campaign!: How Social Media Managers for Danish Political Parties Perceive User-Generated Content

Social media platforms have increasingly become key sites for political communication in both Europe and the United States (Vergeer 2012; Enli & Moe 2013). In Denmark, Facebook in particular has become a near-ubiquitous part of the campaign mix due to widespread uptake in the country (Skovsgaard & Van Dalen 2013). This development enables Danish citizens to communicate to and with political parties at an unprecedented scale. While recent studies highlight that social media platforms enable citizens to have access to political discussions (Schwartz 2015; Ohme, de Vreese & Albæk 2017), little research explores how actors within institutional politics perceive and approach such user-generated content. This article examines this issue through the following research questions:

How do the social media managers in Danish political parties perceive the role and potential of user-generated content and interactions on social media?

The examination is based on interviews with the social media managers of the nine parties that are represented in the Danish parliament. The interviews are analysed through an inductive qualitative coding, establishing key themes, narratives and perceptions towards social media users as an audience, as content-producers and as democratic citizens. The presented findings are discussed through the conceptual vocabulary of Carpentier (2011, 2017), who defines political participation as processes of co-deciding, conditioned by access and interaction, yet also dependent upon influence on the decision-making processes. Building on this theoretical framework, the article discusses the opportunities and limitations of access, interaction and political participation on parliamentary social media platforms, as articulated by the social media managers within Danish parties. The goal is to gain a deeper understanding of how institutional political actors navigate the complex processes of decentralised content production and dissemination on social media.

While a majority of the previous studies examine political content on social media (Jackson & Lilleker 2009; Karlsen 2011; Skovsgaard & Van Dalen 2013; Strandberg 2013), this study takes a different approach by exploring how political social media managers perceive and articulate their approach to and view of social media users.

Political communication in online environments has been studied since the early days of the World Wide Web (Grossman 1996; Stromer-Galley 2000), and the use of social media can be seen as an extension of existing digital campaign strategies focusing on web 1.0 technologies such as static websites, narrow-casted micro-messages and targeted online advertisements (Norris 2000; Strömbäck 2007). Compared to these earlier practices, user-generated content in social media environments introduces new facets to existing political communication and campaign practices (Lilleker & Jackson 2010; Chadwick 2013). Furthermore, it invigorates existing scholarly debates around digital media’s potential for strengthening or weakening democratic citizenship through political participation (Iannelli 2016; Coleman 2017).

In 2000, Norris envisioned that the Internet would transform political communication and campaigning, although this would not necessarily entail increased democratisation but would rather lean towards normalisation and reinforcement of traditional political structures (Norris 2000). Since this early prediction, the participatory potential of online platforms has been subject to extensive research and discussion among communication scholars (Papacharrissi 2010; Dahlgren, 2013; Iannelli 2016). Numerous researchers have argued that citizen uptake of digital media could potentially act as a democratising force, bridging gaps between citizens and politicians through new, empowering means of “mass self-communication” (Castells 2012: 6; Alaimo 2015). Others have argued that social network sites (SNSs) undermine democratic politics due to commercial ownership (Fuchs 2013) and pseudo-participatory online practices that limit ‘real’ offline engagement (Morozov 2011).

In the context of institutional politics, a number of empirical studies show that digital media technologies primarily serve politicians as extensions of traditional media, reinforcing the status quo or ‘politics as usual’ (Lilleker & Jackson 2010; Coleman 2017). Scholarship engaging specifically with political communication on social media draws similar conclusions, finding that politicians first and foremost engage in one-way communication focused on image improvement and agenda-setting (Klinger 2013; Strandberg 2013; Larsson 2015). Political actors thus seem more cautious than innovative when it comes to social media usage (Lilleker, Koc-Michalska & Jackson 2015; Kalsnes 2016). According to Kalsnes (2016: 5), such cautiousness can be attributed to three perceived risks among politicians: (1) offensive user behaviour, (2) negative news media attention, and (3) limited resources. Based on qualitative interviews with the social media managers for parties in the Norwegian parliament, Kalsnes (2016) finds that these perceived risks cause discrepancies between expressed strategic goals and actual social media practices during election campaigns. She describes this as a “social media interaction deadlock” (p. 9).

While research highlights that platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are becoming increasingly important for political campaigning (Chadwick 2013; Bruns et al. 2016), it appears that social media use, as a means for new modalities of interaction and deliberation with citizens, is cautious among political actors (Nielsen & Vacarri 2013). In practice, social media platforms primarily function as channels for one-way communications (Kalsnes 2016), despite their interactive and decentralised technological architectures.

Political participation is a contested and elusive term in both political theory and media theory due to its many conceptualisations, connecting to different democratic models and ideals (Strömbäck 2005; Carpentier 2011, 2017). While some scholars primarily equate participation to acts of voting in representative democracies, others define the term broadly as processes of citizen influence on social organisations (see Ekman & Amnå 2012). In the context of digital media, yet others argue that participation encapsulates a range of modalities of personal expression, placing little emphasis on power dynamics and political outcomes. Examples of the latter include Jenkins’ (2006) notion of ‘participatory cultures’, Gibson, Lusoli and Ward’s (2005: 566) definition of participation, which encompasses sending “political jokes to friends from websites”, and Cantijoch, Cutts and Gibson’s (2016: 36) definition of participation, which includes “signing up for party news feeds”. Drawing on a critique of such broad definitions of participation (Carpentier 2011; Fuchs 2013), the following section outlines how the term is used in this article.

In 2006, at the beginning of the so-called ‘Web 2.0’ (O’Reilly 2005), the concept of participation rose to prominence through the work of scholars such as Gibson et al. (2005) and Jenkins (2006). Drawing on cultural and fan studies, Jenkins (2006) argued that the increased ubiquity of digital media gave rise to new forms of participatory cultures in which “consumers are invited to actively participate in the creation and circulation of new content” (Jenkins 2006: 290). Digital media, he argued, served as a catalyst for participatory practices, as it facilitated the production of user-generated content, decentralised social formations and new forms of online communities. This brought “the realm of political discourse closer to the everyday life experiences of citizens” (Jenkins 2006: 208), giving rise to more open, participatory and democratic societies.

In response to Jenkins (2006), scholars such as Fuchs (2013) and Carpentier (2011) have criticised his use of participation as a synonym for user engagement, arguing that it neglects the societal role of power relations, equates content production with citizenship and overestimates the role of digital media as a democratic force. As Fuchs (2013) pointedly criticises, according to such broad definitions, anti-democratic groups spreading violent hatred are just as ‘participatory’ as democratic movements. In line with this argument, Carpentier (2011) writes:

[P]articipation cannot be equated with ‘mere’ access to or interaction [… ] as Jenkins and others do [… ]. Access and interaction do matter for political processes in the media – they are actually its conditions for possibility – but they are also very distinct from participation because of their less explicit emphasis on power dynamics and decision-making.

Carpentier (2011, 2017) distinguishes between access, interaction and participation. Drawing on Mouffe’s (2005) democratic theory of agonistic pluralism, he argues that all forms of participation concern negotiations of power and antagonism between social actors. Consequently, access and interaction are pre-conditions for participation, yet they do not automatically translate into it, as participation requires some level of citizen influence on political processes. This, however, is not limited to institutionalised politics, but also includes social spaces, such as the workplace and local communities.

In line with Carpentier (2011), Ekman and Amnå (2012) define political participation as processes in which citizens seek to “influence politics and political outcomes in society, or the decisions that affect public affairs” (2012: 289). This not only pertains to institutional politics, but also extra-governmental social formations. Similar to Carpentier (2011), Ekman and Amnå (2012) distinguish between political participation and more latent forms of engagement, such as “[d]iscussing politics and societal issues, with friends or on the Internet” (Ekman & Amnå 2012: 295). In sum, emphasising the importance of citizen influence on political outcomes, Carpentier (2011), Fuchs (2013) and Ekman and Amnå (2012) all define political participation in a narrower sense than scholars such as Jenkins (2006), Gibson et al. (2005) and Cantijoch et al. (2016).

Based on the conceptual vocabulary of Carpentier (2011, 2017), social media platforms can be seen as key spaces for potential political participation, as they enable widespread access and interaction for citizens to engage in political debates, which are “pre-requisites of participation” (Carpentier 2017: 93). Yet they are not equivalent to participation, as this requires an element of influence on decision-making processes. Carpentier (2011) illustrates this distinction by equating access with the presence of people, interaction with the socio-communicative relationships that allow for co-production, and finally, participation with co-deciding, whether in relation to local communities, organisations or institutional politics (Carpentier 2011).

In sum, a prerequisite for participation is having access to a communicative space in which citizens can interact. Yet in order for access and interaction to result in participation, it needs to have some kind of influence on political outcomes. In this article, we use this narrow definition of participation as a theoretical framework for discussing how party political social media managers perceive user activity and evaluate the participatory potential of social media. Particularly, we focus on how they articulate the opportunities, tensions and challenges between citizen access to, interaction with and participation with political parties. In this context, it should be stressed that the article does not seek to evaluate the overall state of political participation in Denmark nor advocate for a particular online participatory ideal. With a more limited contribution in mind, the article seeks to contribute new insights on the complex issue of citizen engagement and participation online, highlighting how party political social media managers in Denmark perceive user engagement on social media and its democratic potential.

The study is based on 18 qualitative interviews with the social media managers from all nine parliamentary parties in Denmark (the representatives from Greenland and the Faroe Islands are not included). All the respondents were interviewed twice: prior to the Danish national elections held on 18 June 2015 and in the subsequent months.

One party, The Alternative, was not yet in parliament before the elections. They were, however, included in the study as opinion polls predicted their election to parliament (which came true).

In order to ensure that the interviews covered the same range of topics, a semi-structured interview guide was used throughout the data collection, enabling the interviewers to guide conversations, while allowing for variations. The interviews were broad in scope, allowing the participants to define key issues and framings based on experience and perceptions. The questions were open-ended in order to avoid steering the interviewees into adopting particular concepts, perspectives or attitudes. Examples of the introductory questions include “what goals does your party have in relation to social media?” and “how does your party use social media to listen to users and/or engage with them?” Regarding perceptions of the participatory potential of social media, the questions included “when you receive input from social media users, do you analyse this in any way?” and “do you think social media can be used to assess public opinion?”

When contacting the parties, we requested to interview the ‘Head of Social Media’ within each party organisation. This brought us in contact with three types of staff. In some cases, the parties had a dedicated ‘Social Media Manager’ responsible solely for social media communications (although rarely using this official title). In other cases, the interviewees had the job title of ‘Web Editor’, being responsible for all digital communications, including websites and online newsletters. Finally, in some parties (particularly minor ones), the interviewees had the title of ‘Head of Communications’, as no single employee was assigned to digital media. Throughout this article, we use the term social media manager as a general marker to delineate all the interviewees.

In order to obtain permission to conduct the 18 interviews, we agreed to ensure the anonymity of all the interviewees by not revealing party-specific information. Accordingly, all the interviewees have been assigned a random number in this article (Interviewee 1, 2, 3, etc.). The interviews were transcribed and subsequently coded using a two-step, qualitative design. First, all the interviews were inductively coded, focusing on emergent themes across the dataset (Charmaz 2006). Second, one particular theme pertaining to users and user-generated content was selected to undergo a second round of inductive coding for emergent sub-themes. This resulted in four themes representing four distinct aspects of party political social media management and user-generated content. These four sub-themes are: monitoring, moderating, replying and (user) influence. While these codes have been developed inductively, they relate to Carpentier’s distinction and progression from access and interaction to political participation, as the first three codes primarily pertain to access and interaction, while the final code, (user) influence, relates to political participation. Following the analysis, we discuss the implications of our findings in relation to this theoretical framework.

Across the 18 interviews, the respondents articulate that public social media accounts, particularly on Facebook, have become central components in communication strategies for both party organisations and individual political candidates. This is reflected in each party organisation, in which increasing amounts of resources – both economic and human – have been allocated to social media management in recent years. This increased allocation is found in both major and minor parties on both the left and right wing of the political spectrum. Across the parties, the primary platforms are Facebook and Twitter, although Facebook dominates:

In relation to Facebook, we are very aware that […] there are 3.5 million Danes, right? It’s a medium with a potential of reaching huge amounts of people, who we would not be able to reach, not even if we were in prime-time news or had a front page in Berlingske [Danish newspaper] […]. Our strategy for Twitter is different because Twitter is desolate when it comes to regular Danes. I mean, at least active Twitter users are all opinion leaders and politicians and […] a great concentration of journalists […]. So, it’s not a place where we do mass communication in the same way as we do on Facebook.

Twitter is generally seen as an elite medium for media professionals and opinion leaders, whereas Facebook is “where the votes are” (Interviewee 7, pre-elections). This is discernible across all nine parties. The interviewees generally state that a majority of user-generated content on party Facebook pages derive from existing supporters. This engagement from supporters, however, is vital for reaching and influencing new voters, as the quantity of likes, comments and shares influences the visibility of content on Facebook (see Bucher 2012). Consequently, social media managers continuously seek to increase the amounts of user reactions to further algorithmic content dissemination:

Every time someone comments something, it reaches a couple of hundred more people. And every time someone likes it, well, that is in fact a lot of free advertisement, you could say, during an election campaign… Facebook makes sure to distribute it further and further, the more engagement it receives. And that is the problem really that not that many people see our stuff, if we don’t create engagement in some way or another.

In the above quote, we find several interesting arguments. The response suggests that user-generated content on Facebook primarily serves as a vehicle for reaching larger audiences through one-way communication. At the same time, the social media manager underlines that party-generated content needs to be emotionally engaging in order to make people take action by liking, commenting and sharing. The quantity of user reactions thereby functions as a key parameter of success, leading social media managers to continuously optimise their ability to incite such reactions.

Although all the interviewees articulate that user-generated content is important for political communication, their perceptions of social media users diverge across parties. This is discernible from responses to the four, identified (sub-)themes. In this categorisation, monitoring refers to practices of observing and monitoring user activities on party political social media platforms; moderation refers to practices of removing user content and blocking users from commenting – an option available for page administrators on all Facebook pages and profiles (Farkas, Schou & Neumayer 2018); replying refers to reciprocal communications between political parties and users; and (user) influence refers to the ability of users to influence decision-making processes associated with the political parties.

Based on the four themes presented in this article – monitoring, moderating, replying and user influence – we have uncovered a range of perceptions among party political social media managers in Denmark about users and user-generated content. Overall, our findings show that the social media managers for the parties that are represented in the Danish parliament perceive user-generated content, particularly on Facebook, as an important means of successful political communication during the 2015 election campaign. In this context, the users are not only characterised as the recipients of oneway communications, but as the (re-)distributors of content through likes, comments and shares. The quantity of user engagement acts as a key measure of successful social media management across the parties. User engagement, however, is primarily valued as an instrument for increasing the proliferation and reach of one-way party communications. Yet the social media managers continuously monitor user comments in order to moderate and reply to users, as well as to “take the temperature” of public opinion.

As stated at the beginning of this article, previous research on the relationship between political parties and social media users finds that parties primarily engage in oneway communications without much interaction (Lilleker et al. 2015; Kalsnes 2016). Our findings indicate that although not all the parties prioritise interaction with users, the social media managers reportedly spend considerable time monitoring user activities. Additionally, the study shows that the social media managers place great emphasis on facilitating political debates through party-user moderation and/or replies. These findings indicate that political social media platforms in Denmark do not solely function as oneway communication channels, but at least to some extent contain dialogical elements. These findings, however, could also point to a different conclusion, namely a potential discrepancy between the expressed ideals and actual practices on political social media platforms. As Kalsnes (2016) finds, the party political social media managers in Norway express a more idealistic view in the interviews than is reflected in what they do in practice. As our study solely relies on qualitative interviews, similar discrepancies could exist in Danish politics between perceptions and activity. This comparison is outside the scope of this article but is something we hope to explore in the future.

Political participation, as Carpentier (2011) defines it, relies on access and interaction. Through our analysis, we find that social media platforms provide widespread access for Danish citizens to take part in political debates. According to the interviewees, citizens are increasingly present and engaged on party social media platforms. At the same time, however, the interviewees hesitate to view Facebook as representative of the general population. The users are thus simultaneously – and to some extent contradictorily – perceived as a guidepost of public opinion, an unrepresentative focus group and an aggressive online crowd. Due to the latter, user access only translates into limited interactions between the parties and the users, ranging from none at all to parties prioritising replies to all direct user enquiries.

Based on our study, we only find a few examples of user access and interaction translating into any form of concrete political participation on social media, defined as influence on political outcomes or decision-making. Particularly during election campaigns, there is reportedly little time and incentive to allow users to influence any political processes related to the parties. However, through their function as guideposts of public opinion, social media users do seem to have some degree of indirect influence over the way in which the parties communicate. This influence, however, is both limited and opaque, as no party systematically analyses user input, but only selectively uses comments to “take the temperature” of public opinion. Hierarchies of power between the parties and the citizens are thus largely (re-)produced on social media. Social media managers argue that hierarchies are necessary, as the level of debate would otherwise deteriorate. Political participation is not perceived as feasible due to user aggression, fear of appearing imprudent as well as the unrepresentativeness of Facebook users. While this confirms the existing findings of ‘politics-as-usual’ on the parties’ social media platforms, it contributes new insights on how social media managers explain, reflect on and reason about the participatory potential of social media in practice. While this does not reflect the general state of online participation in Denmark, it shows that no political party, perhaps with the exception of one minor party, systematically seeks or plans to enhance citizen influence on key political decision-making processes through social media.

In conclusion, our findings show that the political parties enable little political participation in the sense of co-deciding through social media. The social media managers are primarily interested in user-generated content as a means of distribution, because likes, comments and shares increase the reach of political posts. In this context, however, it should be noted that as election campaigns revolve around influencing voter preferences, it is perhaps not surprising that political parties focus more on one-way communications during such periods. An additional line of inquiry, which we hope to pursue in future work, is therefore whether user-generated content is perceived and approached differently outside election campaigns.