Social Media Communication of European Nation States Revisited: A Transnational Content Analysis Between Germany, Poland and the UK in 2011 and 2014

Abstract

In today’s media society, political communications play an essential role within the scope of politics. It has become a necessity for political actors in modern democracies to inform and involve citizens in the process of political decision-making, as there is a need for legitimisation towards the public. Thus, the media change that has taken place over the last decade and is characterized by the evolvement of social media, strongly affects political communications. How do political players adapt to the changing media environment?

In this context, the present research conducted specifically analyses how the German, British and Polish governments as political players react to this development in terms of their social media communications. In doing so, it focuses on the research question, whether the governments indeed take advantage of the new opportunities to hold a true dialogue with citizens and allow interactivity – which can be identified as the actual purpose of social media – or, if they only utilize social media as another information channel.

The goal of this study is to compare the social media-communications of the three countries with each other, as well as to draw a comparison between the results of a predecessor study Sievert & Nelke conducted in 2011 (cf. Sievert & Nelke, 2014) – which the methodology of this research derives from – and current results.

Keywords: social media, Europe, Poland, Germany, Britain, political communication, media

JEL Classification: P16, Z00