Overview
- Contributes to debates surrounding the role of social networks in enhancing politicians' accountability and the responsiveness of the political system
- Assesses the extent to which the offline behaviour of politicians may be inferred from the social media content
- Analyses the relationship between voters and political elites and how this can be strengthened
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Table of contents (10 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
- social media impact on politics
- political transparency
- political participation
- everyday politics
- politicians use of social media
- interaction between citizens and politicians
- political trust
- role of social media on political responsiveness
- role of social media on political engagement
- intra-party politics
- political use of twitter
- political use of facebook
About this book
This book illustrates how social media platforms enable us to understand everyday politics and evaluates the extent to which they can foster accountability, transparency and responsiveness. The first part focuses on accountability and tests whether the offline behavior of politicians is consistent with their online declarations, showing that textual analysis of politicians’ messages is useful to explain phenomena such as endorsements, party splits and appointments to cabinet. The second part concerns responsiveness. By means of sentiment analysis, it investigates the shape of the interaction between citizens and politicians determining whether politicians’ behavior is influenced by the pressure exerted on social media both on policy and non-policy issues. Finally, the book evaluates whether a responsive behavior is successful in restoring online political trust, narrowing the gap between voters and political elites. The book will be of use to students, scholars and practitioners interested in party organization, intra-party politics, legislative politics, social media analysis and political communication, as well as politicians themselves.
Reviews
“This is the book to read if you want to go beyond the hype and the gloom about social media’s contribution to contemporary democracies. Andrea Ceron asks theoretically important and original questions, and answers them with an impressive assemblage of original and compelling studies conducted with cutting-edge methods.” (Dr. Cristian Vaccari, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Andrea Ceron is Assistant Professor at Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy, and co-founder of Voices from the Blogs Ltd, a University spin-off that analyzes social media. He has published articles in the British Journal of Political Science, European Journal of Political Research, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, New Media & Society, Information Sciences, and Party Politics.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Social Media and Political Accountability
Book Subtitle: Bridging the Gap between Citizens and Politicians
Authors: Andrea Ceron
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52627-0
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-52626-3Published: 17 July 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-84949-2Published: 13 May 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-52627-0Published: 29 June 2017
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIII, 236
Number of Illustrations: 11 b/w illustrations
Topics: Political Communication, Social Media, Legislative and Executive Politics, Political Leadership