On Monday the 9th of October Majbritt K. Severin-Nielsen, visiting scholar from Aalborg University (DK) gave a guest lecture to the department on her PhD research: between traditional and social media on traditional and social media usage of Danish MPs.
In her PhD research, Severin-Nielsen examines politicians’ social media usage contextualized with their broader communication practices and political work. There are many ’black and white’ assumptions about social media in Danish society. For example, the image of politicians only using social media to bypass critical questions from journalists. The goal of Majbritts’ research is to understand how Danish members of parliament navigate social media within current hybrid media system and how it impacts them.
Her findings nuance some of the common assumptions there are about social media. Politicians cannot simply bypass journalists without consequences, because this would harm their image, as people would be aware of this. In addition, where people assume politicians have a well-thought out social media strategy, this often is not the case. More often they just ”do something”, as they do not have time and thus are not as strategic as people often assume. The findings also point out that social media facilitates a continuous dialogue between politicians & citizens, which extends to the offline world.
It was a pleasure to host Severin-Nielsen’s research visit to Wageningen and we are thankful for her introducing us to her interesting research.
Want to know more? Reach out to her through Twitter or email.
Data-Driven Democracy Lab 