Abstract
This article examines parliament representatives’ Twitter- contributions (tweets). First, the genre of communication approach is introduced to identify common characteristics and communication patterns. Second, the findings are analysed using various eDemocracy models and deliberative standards to identify to what extent these tweets could be characterized as part of a deliberative discussion. The tweets are mainly dominated by five communication purposes; providing links to information sources for other Twitter users, to inform about the representative’s ongoing activities, to express views on topical issues, introducing non-political (private) content and participating in online discussions with other parliament representatives. Other less frequent communication patterns include tweets attracting attention to the representative’s own blogs, requests for input from readers and finally discussions with citizens. The analysed tweets generally did not meet deliberative standards and are dominated by politicians disseminating information and discussing with other parliament representatives. We conclude by arguing that the parliament representatives’ Twitter use is linked to the Liberal Democracy model, where the main purpose is to disseminate information to electors, and provide information on ongoing activities to the audience.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Baumgartner, J.C., Morris, J.S.: MyFaceTube Politics. Social Science Computer Review 28(1), 24–44 (2010)
Tocqueville, A.d., Mill, J.S.: Democracy in America: in two volumes with a critical appraisal of each volume by John Stuart Mill1961, p. 2b. Schocken Books, New York (1961)
Yates, J., Orlikowski, W.J.: Genres of Organizational Communication: A Structurational Approach to Studying Communication and Media. Academy of Management Review 17(2), 299–326 (1992)
Shah, D.V., et al.: Information and Expression in a Digital Age. Communication Research 32(5), 531–565 (2005)
Bhatia, V.K.: Analysing genre: language use in professional settings, vol. XVI, p. 246s. Longman, London (1993)
Päivärinta, T., Sæbø, Ø.: The Genre System Lens on E-Democracy. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems 20(2) (2008)
Päivärinta, T.: The Concept of Genre within the Critical Approach to Information Systems Development. Information & Organization 11(3), 207–234 (2001)
Sæbø, Ø., Flak, L.S., Sein, M.K.: Understanding the dynamics in e-Participation Initiatives: Looking through the genre and stakeholder lenses. Government Information Quarterly (forthcoming)
Sæbø, Ø., Rose, J., Skiftenes Flak, L.: The shape of eParticipation: Characterizing an emerging research area. Government Information Quarterly 25(3), 400–428 (2008)
Held, D.: Models of Democracy. Blackwell, Oxford (1996)
Lively, J.: Democracy. Blackwell, Oxford (1975)
Van Dijk, J.: Models of democracy and concepts of communication. In: Hacker, K.L., Van Dijk, J. (eds.) Digital Democracy, Issues of Theory and Practice. Sage publications, London (2000)
Zhang, W., et al.: The Revolution Will be Networked. Social Science Computer Review 28(1), 75–92 (2010)
Graham, T.: Needles in a haystack: a new approach for identifying and assessing political talk in non - political discussion forums. Javnost: the Public 15(2), 17–36 (2008)
Rose, J., Sæbø, Ø.: Designing Deliberation Systems. The Information Society: An International Journal 26(3), 228–240 (2010)
Strandberg, K.: Public deliberation goes on-line? An analysis of citizens, Äô political discussions on the Internet prior to the Finnish parliamentary elections in 2007. Javnost-The Public 15(1) (2008)
Rose, J., Sæbø, Ø.: Democracy Squared: designing on-line political communities to accommodate conflicting interests. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems 17(2) (2005)
Päivärinta, T., Sæbø, Ø.: Models of E-Democracy. Communications of the Association for Information Systems 17, 818–840 (2006)
Ihlström, C.: The Evolution of a New(s) Genre. Gothenburg Studies in Informatics 2004, p. 162. Göteborg University, Gothenburg (2004)
Orlikowski, W.J., Yates, J.: Genre repertoire: The structuring of Communicative Practices in Organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly 39, 541–574 (1994)
Kwasnik, B.H., Crowston, K.: Introduction to the special issue: Genres of digital documents. Information Technology & People 18(2), 89 (2005)
Yates, J., Orlikowski, W.J., Okamura, K.: Explicit and Implicit Structuring of Genres in Electronic Communication: Reinforcement and Change of Social Interaction. Organization Science 10(1), 83–103 (1999)
Dahl, R.A.: Democracy and its critics 1989, vol. VIII, p. 397s. Yale University Press, New Haven (1989)
Eriksen, E.O., Weigård, J.: Kommunikativ handling og deliberativt demokrati: Jürgen Habermas’ teori om politikk og samfunn, p. 340s. Fagbokforl, Bergen (1999)
Pateman, C.: Participation and democratic theory, p. 122. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1970)
Gimmler, A.: Deliberative democracy, the public sphere and the internet. Philosophy Social Criticism 27(4), 21–39 (2001)
Java, A., et al.: Why we twitter: understanding microblogging usage and communities. In: Proceedings of the 9th WebKDD and 1st SNA-KDD 2007 Workshop on Web Mining and Social Network Analysis, pp. 56–65. ACM, San Jose (2007)
Silverman, D.: Interpreting Qualitative Data. Sage, London (2001)
Berelson, B.: Content Analysis In Communicative Research. Free Press, New York (1952)
Wilkinson, S.: Focus group research. In: Silverman, D. (ed.) Qualitative Research: Theory, Method and Practice, pp. 177–199. Sage, London (1997)
Markus, M.L., Robey, D.: Information Technology and Organizational Change: Causal Structure in Theory and Research. Management Science 34(5), 583–598 (1988)
Orlikowski, W.J., Iacono, S.: Research commentary: Desperately seeking IT in IT Research - A Call to Theorizing the IT Artifact. Information Systems Research 12(2), 121 (2001)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
About this paper
Cite this paper
Sæbø, Ø. (2011). Understanding TwitterTM Use among Parliament Representatives: A Genre Analysis. In: Tambouris, E., Macintosh, A., de Bruijn, H. (eds) Electronic Participation. ePart 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6847. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23333-3_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23333-3_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-23332-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-23333-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)