Genres of participation in social networking systems: A study of the 2013 Norwegian parliamentary election

Abstract

Online campaigning has been on the agenda of Norwegian political parties since 2001. In 2007, there were some early attempts at online campaigning through social networking systems (SNS) during the municipal elections. 2009 was the first time SNS’ were used for campaigning on a national level by all the political parties represented in parliament. This study follows up an earlier study of the 2009 election by examining the communication genres being used by Norwegian political parties in the 2013 parliamentary election. The 2009 study concluded that a genre system for online campaigning was emerging in SNS’, and presented an overview of this system. This paper shows that the genre system is slowly moving towards an established system, and that while still not fully sorted out, previous issues, such as a lack of two-way communication, is being addressed by the parties. The study concludes that campaigning in SNS’ is slowly moving more and more towards the objectives of politics 2.0.