Reaching the Voter : Exploring Swedish Political Parties’ Assessment of Different Communication Channels in Three National Election Campaigns, 2010–2018

• The mediatization of politics denotes a long-term process through which politicalactors have become increasingly dependent on news media, the key mechanismbeing the adaptation to news media and news media logic by political actors. Oneaspect of this is related to how political parties communicate during election cam-paigns, and how important they perceive different communication channels to be.Against this background, the purpose of this study is to explore the assessment ofdifferent communication channels in election campaigns by political parties overtime. This study analyses the ways in which political parties value the importanceof traditional news media, social media and traditional methods for communica-tion with voters during election campaigns. The empirical material covers the 2010,2014 and 2018 Swedish national elections, enabling us to make comparisons withinthe same national context as well as to explore their development over time. Theresults indicate that news media is still considered the most important communi-cation channel, although social media is levelling the field.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Statsvetenskap -- Statsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Political Science -- Political Science (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications (hsv//eng)

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)