Warum entstehen die sichtbarsten politischen Online-Initiativen in Deutschland nicht in den Parteizentralen sondern dezentral? Kann man daraus auf ein Versagen der Parteien im Netz schliessen?

These 1: Erfolge von Online Initiativen können als Ergebnisse eines politische Seismographen gelesen werden

Im Internet drehen sich Konversationen nicht um Organisationen sondern um Personen, Objekte oder Themen. Wenn politische Kampagnen im Netz Geschwindigkeit gewinnen, dann geschieht dies häufig in bereits bestehenden Interessen-Communities (z.B. in der Kommentarspalte eines Blogs) oder in den privaten Netzwerken von Betroffenen. Häufig werden Menschen online spontan politisch aktiv, die ansonsten mit Politik nicht viel zu tun haben. Nicht langfristige Einbindung in politische Prozesse oder Organisationen motiviert sondern plötzliche Ereignisse oder Themen, die in den ansonsten unpolitischen Alltag einbrechen. Und so wird auf Kommunikationswegen dieses Alltags lautstark politische Zustimmung oder Ablehnung kommuniziert. So ist es auch kein Wunder, dass im Netz erfolgreich ist was routinierte Berufspolitiker und Hauptstadtjournalisten spontan erst einmal als Nichtthemen einordnen würden. Einige Beispiele: Netzsperren-Petition, Yeaahh-Flashmobs, My-Gauck, S21 Gegner, GuttenPlag Wiki, zu Guttenberg Unterstützer.

Diese Initiativen entstanden neben dem üblichen politischen Prozess und ihr Erfolg war in der Regel sowohl für Politiker, Medien als auch häufig für die Initiatoren selbst überraschend. Auch wenn einige dieser Initiativen im Umfeld von Parteien entstanden oder nach Anfangserfolgen von etablierten Parteien und Politikern unterstützt wurden, ist das nicht der Grund für ihren Erfolg. Stattdessen sprachen diese Initiativen Themen an, die durch den politischen Betrieb vernachlässigt wurden, die aber die Unterstützer der Initiativen für wichtig hielten. Der Erfolg einzelner Online-Initiativen lässt sich also wie ein politischer Seismograph lesen.

These 2: Die Stärkung von Online-Partizipation ist zur Zeit eine Ermächtigung der Ermächtigten

In Deutschland haben Bürger Interesse an der politischen Partizipation über Online-Kanäle. Diese Bürger stellen aber keinen repräsentativen Ausschnitt der Gesamtbevölkerung dar. Stattdessen zeigen Nutzungsstudien von Online-Partizipationskanälen, dass diese in der Regel von einer politisch aktiveren, formal besser gebildeteren und männlicheren Bevölkerungsgruppe genutzt wird als dem Schnitt der Bundesbürger (vgl. z.B. Linder und Riehm 2011, Marschall 2011). Eine politische Stärkung von Online-Partizipation ist also zur Zeit wohl eine Ermächtigung der Ermächtigten.

These 3: In Deutschland wird das Internet von der Bevölkerung überwiegend noch nicht als Medium der politischen Partizipation gesehen

Im Gegensatz zu den USA ist das Internet in Deutschland noch kein dominierendes Medium für Bürger, um sich über Politik zu informieren. Die Mannheimer Forscher Thorsten Faas und Julia Partheymüller fanden in einer Untersuchung zur politischen Onlinenutzung während des Bundestagswahlkampf 2009, dass nur 18,8% der von Ihnen Befragten in der Woche bevor dem Befragungszeitpunkt mindestens an einem Tag das Internet genutzt hatte, um sich über den Wahlkampf zu informieren (Faas und Partheymüller 2011). Ähnliche Ergebnisse finden sich in Studien, die sich mit der aktiven politischen Partizipation über Soziale Netzwerkplattformen befassen (vgl. z.B. von Pape und Quandt). Das Internet wird also zur Zeit von den meisten Deutschen nicht als Medium für politische Information oder Partizipation gesehen.

These 4: Der Schwerpunkt des parteipolitischen Community-Managements liegt offline ganz richtig

Für einen Großteil der deutschen Parteimitglieder und Unterstützer ist das Telefon, der Bürgerbrief oder der Besuch der Bürgersprechstunde eines Politikers immer noch der bevorzugte Weg für politisches Feedback. Solange dies so bleibt, solange sind Parteien und Politiker gut beraten, auch weiterhin den Schwerpunkt ihres Community-Managments offline zu sehen.

Literatur:

Thorsten Faas und Julia Partheymüller (2011) “Aber jetzt?! Politische Internetnutzung in den Bundestagswahlkämpfen 2005 und 2009,” In: Eva Johanna Schweitzer und Steffen Albrecht (Hrsg.): Das Internet im Wahlkampf. Analysen zur Bundestagswahl 2009. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag. S. 119 – 135. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-531-92853-1_4.

Ralf Lindner und Ulrich Riehm (2011) “Broadening Participation Through E-Petitions? An Empirical Study of Petitions to the German Parliament,” Policy & Internet: Vol. 3: Iss. 1, Article 4. DOI: 10.2202/1944-2866.1083

Stefan Marschall (2011) “Wahlen, Wähler, Wahl-O-Mat,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B 61, S. 40-46.

Thilo von Pape und Thorsten Quandt (2010) “Wen erreicht der Wahlkampf 2.0? Eine Repräsentativ-studie zum Informationsverhalten im Bundestagswahlkampf 2009,” Media Perspektiven, 9/2010, S. 390-398.

[Update: 2011/06/06]
Bei Blogfraktion habe ich die These 2 noch etwas ausführlicher formuliert: “Wer hat, dem wird gegeben: Politische Beteiligung im Internet“.

We first happened upon the idea that certain users, based on their position in conversation networks of politically interested users, were able to keep political information from reaching specific sections of the network in a paper on the use of Twitter during the run up to the German federal election of 2009, Wahlkampf vom Sofa aus: Twitter im Bundestagswahlkampf 2009 [Preprint]. In that paper we called these users New Gatekeepers in reference to the Gatekeeper concept in mass communication research.

We met the New Gatekeepers again in a blogpost for the ZEIT blog Zweitstimme. In the post “Alle Twitterer sind gleich, aber manche sind gleicher: Neue Gatekeeper und ihre Bedeutung für die Verbreitung von Nachrichten auf Twitter” we constructed a network based on Twitter conversations between politically vocal users during one day. We showed that the unity of the network depended critically on a few well connected users. Once we excluded these users from the network it scattered into many isolated components. This shows that these users, because of their position in the structure of the network, are vital for the distribution of information to different sections of the network.

Conversation network of politically interested Twitter users on 9/1/2009

In “Small Worlds with a Difference: New Gatekeepers and the Filtering of Political Information on Twitter” we decided to look for a specific metric in quantitative social network analysis that corresponded with our interpretation of New Gatekeepers and to check if users existed in our network that corresponded with said metric. We ended up using a concept based on work by Stephen Borgatti (2005) and Daniel Ortiz-Arroyo (2010). Based on their reasoning we decided to identify those nodes in the network whose exclusion had the strongest impact on the entropy of the whole network. Our analysis showed that the exclusion of only a few nodes critically impacts the entropy of the network. For us this is an indicator for the ability of a small number of users to effectively filter the flow of information on Twitter.

For a more detailed discussion of this and the bias these users showed in their Twitter activities please have a look at the paper. Please let us know what you think of the concept and its operationalization in the context of social network analysis.

[Update: 2011/06/21]
Meanwhile Pascal has uploaded his presentation.

Also, our contribution was mentioned in “The Science of the Web” by David De Roure [@dder] on his nature network blog eResearch.

[Update: 2011/07/21]
Pascal’s presentation has been posted as a video on videolectures.net [Video: Small Worlds with a Difference: New Gatekeepers and the Filtering of Political Information on Twitter]

Further Reading:
Stephen P. Borgatti (2005) ‘Centrality and network flow’, Social Networks 27, 55-71. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2004.11.008.

Andreas Jungherr, Pascal Jürgens and Harald Schoen (2011) ‘Alle Twitterer sind gleich, aber manche sind gleicher: Neue Gatekeeper und ihre Bedeutung für die Verbreitung von Nachrichten auf Twitter’ Zweitstimme.

Pascal Jürgens and Andreas Jungherr (2011) ‘Wahlkampf vom Sofa aus: Twitter im Bundestagswahlkampf 2009’, in: Eva Johanna Schweitzer and Steffen Albrecht (eds.), Das Internet im Wahlkampf: Analysen zur Bundestagswahl 2009, Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaft. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-92853-1_8.

Pascal Jürgens, Andreas Jungherr and Harald Schoen (2011) ‘Small Worlds with a Difference: New Gatekeepers and the Filtering of Political Information on Twitter’. Paper presented at the conference ‘ACM WebSc ’11: 3rd International Conference on Web Science’ Koblenz, Germany on 14-17 June. [pdf at the conference's website]

Daniel Ortiz-Arroyo (2010) ‘Discovering Sets of Key Players in Social Networks’, in: Abraham, A., Hassanien, A.-E., and Snásel , V. (eds.). Computational Social Network Analysis. Springer Verlag, Dordrecht et al., 27-46. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-229-0_2.

Für mich war es dieses Jahr die erste re:publica, die ich besuchte. Mir fehlt also der Vergleich zu den Konferenzen der letzten Jahre. Allerdings muss ich sagen, dass ich die Vorträge in diesem Jahr nur semispannend fand. Wenig Neues. Es scheint fast als hätte sich in den netzpolitischen Aufregungen von 2009 die Innovationsenergie des deutschsprachigen Netzes erst einmal für die folgenden Jahren verbrannt. Es müsste doch inzwischen möglich sein, über mehr zu sprechen als vermeintliche Revolutionen oder vermutete Potentiale diverser neuer oder weniger neuer Online-Dienste. So ganz allein scheine ich mit dieser Einschätzung nicht zu sein.

(cc) Jonas Fischer/re:publica

Am Donnerstag hielt ich einen Vortrag mit dem Titel “Politische Klicks: Nutzungsdynamik des deutschen E-Petitionssystems“. In dem Vortrag stellte ich die Ergebnisse einer Studie von Pascal Jürgens und mir zu Nutzerverhalten auf der E-Petitionsplattform des Deutschen Bundestags vor. Hier die Präsentation:

Wer an mehr Informationen zu der Untersuchung interessiert ist wird bei dem Open Access Journal Policy & Internet fündig. Dort haben Pascal Jürgens und ich die Ergebnisse ausführlich in dem Artikel “The Political Click: Political Participation through E-Petitions in Germany” dokumentiert.

Supporter Networks, Blogs, Tweets, and YouTube Videos: Political Campaigns Online

Social media tools have become common features in election campaigns around the world. Still, their adoption varies from country to country and campaign to campaign. This offers a valuable opportunity for researchers interested in political communication and political campaigns. Campaigns exist in specific political, cultural and technological contexts. These contexts determine the way political actors use social media tools in their campaigns. By comparing online campaigns in different countries and of different political leanings we can learn more about the nature of political communication online independent of specific local contexts. To this end the panel “Supporter Networks, Blogs, Tweets, and YouTube Videos: Political Campaigns Online” invites papers that examine recent political campaigns and their use of online channels and social media tools in their specific political, cultural or technological contexts. Questions that might be addressed are: Which social media tools did the campaign in question choose to use and why? How were these decisions grounded, in specific local contexts or advice from international campaigning professionals? Did the campaign achieve its goals and how was this evaluated? From a methodological perspective we are open to different approaches, be it in the form of qualitative case studies, quantitative analysis or work based on the digital methods approach. Also we invite papers that connect specific campaigns to concepts from communication theory, be it for example a discussion in the context of professionalization, mobilization, the digital divide or political learning.

The panel was called “Online Political Organizing in Regional and Local Campaigns” and moderated by Antonella Napolitano [@svaroschi]. With Nicolas Vanbremeersch [@versac] from France, Dino Amenduni [@doonie] from Italy, and Lluis Recorder [@lluisrecoder] from Spain we discussed short case studies in which we tried to illustrate the potential of social media for campaigns on a regional or local level.

Nicolas talked about his experiences using social media to facilitate closer contact between citizens and regional branches of the French government. Dino talked about the highly media centered campaigns he did with the Italian agency Proforma for two Italian politicians, Michele Emiliano and Nichi Vendola. Lluís Recorder, mayor of Sant Cugat del Vallès, talked about his experiences in using social media channels and their influence on his governing practice. These talks were highly stimulating and the presented cases illustrated the potential of social media in different European and political contexts. If you are interested there is an audio recording of the panel available on the PDF Europe site.

On the panel I talked about the social media elements in three recent CDU campaigns – Hessen 2009, the general election 2009 and Nordrhein-Westfalen 2010. In the presentation I tried to highlight the continuity between the campaigns, which exemplify an interesting cycle of campaign learning that build on the lessons of the preceding campaigns. As my presentation design focuses on visuals I hope the recording of the panel gives you the context you need for the slides above.

[Update: 2010/10/15]
Antonella Napolitano has posted a written a little wrap up on the session on the PDF Europe blog: From PdF Europe 2010: Online Political Organizing in Regional and Local Campaigns.

At the conference I presented the paper “The political click: political participation through e-petitions in Germany” written by Pascal Jürgens and me on the use of the German e-petition system. A copy of the paper can be found on the conference microsite hosted by the Oii. There the other papers presented at the conference are also available for download. An updated version of the paper will appear later this year in the peer-reviewed journal Policy & Internet. Since the edits were significant advances on the version available the Oii site I would ask you, if you are interested in the paper, to reference the published version.

The conference has been covered on a number of blogs. For example on:

OII Blog
Internet, Politics, Policy 2010: What is our impact on the Internet? Keynote by Arthur Lupia
Internet, Politics, Policy 2010: Political Participation and Petitioning
Internet, Politics, Policy 2010: Campaigning in the 2010 UK General Election
Internet, Politics, Policy 2010: Closing keynote by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger
Internet, Politics, Policy 2010: Wrap-Up

ICTlogy by Ismael Peña-López
Internet, Politics, Policy (I). Arthur Lupia: An impact Assessment
Internet, Politics, Policy (II). Political Participation and Petitioning
Internet, Politics, Policy (III). Participation in Politics and Policy-making
Internet, Politics, Policy (IV). Comparative Campaigning (I)
Internet, Politics, Policy (V). Campaigning: UK2010 Election
Internet, Politics, Policy (VI). Digital Divides
Internet, Politics, Policy (VII). Internet Governance (II)
Internet, Politics, Policy (VIII). Viktor Mayer-Schönberger: Delete. The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age

Digital Government – Digital Society
Internet, Politics, Policy Conference – Day 1
IPP Conference – Day 2

[Update 2010/12/20]
Richard Parsons [@problybored] was kind enough to write a short wrap up on the Oii draft of “The political click: political participation through e-petitions in Germany” on his blog eDemocracyBlog.com.

Sunbelt 30: The location Lago di Garda

I went to Riva to present a paper, which I cowrote with Pascal Jürgens, during the “Collective Action and Social Movements” track organized by David Tindall and Mario Diani. The paper was called “Just a conversation like any other? A network analysis of digital activism in the German Twittersphere”. In this paper we examined the network structures of three different #networks on Twitter. More on that paper at a later point.

So what remains from the Sunbelt XXX except the amazing location, interesting (and quite unexpected) dinner conversations, and the fond recollection of Italian food and drink?

For one, the keynote of Tom Snijders, in which he gave a short “How we got here?” survey of social network analysis and its major building blocks together with his own estimation of the potential that the concept “reciprocity” might hold in future SNA research. I also enjoyed two talks by Steve Borgatti [@ittagroB] very much. In his talk “Some Thoughts on Analyzing Trajectories” Borgatti illustrated how to model social phenomena like coworking relationships of film directors or career trajectories of college coaches as directed traversals of networks. The second talk had the somewhat grandiose title “A Network Theory of Life, the Universe and Everything: A Progress Report”. In this talk Borgatti outlined his efforts to develop a more generative and integrative approach to network theory. Dawn Gilpin [@drgilpin] gave an interesting talk on her work on Twitter. In the paper “The Twitter network boost: Social amplification and attenuation of discourse in microblogging” she and her coauthors examined how contextual emotional charges influence the amplification and attenuation of online discourse on Twitter. In their presentation “Pride, Prejudice and Dynamic Triangles. Marriage Strategies within the Estate System in England at the End of the 18th Century” Jürgen Pfeffer and Betina Hollstein used the analysis of social networks to examine the social relationships in the TV version of Jane Austen’s novel “Pride and Prejudice”. Based on this they characterized different marriage strategies in late 18th century England. Finally Michael Pearson‘s talk on “Individual Profiles in Local Network Structures” gave me interesting perspectives on how to proceed with the longitudinal analysis of social networks.

For the abstracts of these and the other presentations have a look at the Sunbelt XXX program (pdf).

In the final account: inspiring conversations, instructive paper presentations, Italian food, espresso, and a great location. What more to ask from a conference?

[Update 2010/07/29]

For another account of this year’s sunbelt have a look a Drew Conway’s blog post Sunbelt XXX, and Other Loose Ends.

The workshop was organized by Julia H. Grace [@jewelia], Dejin Zhao [@djzaho] and danah boyd [@zephoria]. It was a great experience and very interesting to discuss the research challenges that microblogging poses with an international and highly interdisciplinary crowd of researchers. I‘ll post my thoughts on the workshop later this day. In this post I‘ll make my presentation and the rough draft of my talk available.

Since I tend to speak freely in presentations this draft might not be exactly what I said, still it should be pretty close. Anyhow this talk was meant as an appetizer to the position paper on the same topic. So, if you‘re looking for something to cite, kindly have a look at said position paper.

Twitter in Politics: Lessons Learned during the German Superwahljahr 2009

by Andreas Jungherr

Draft v.1.0
2010/04/13

In this ignite talk I want to take you on a short trip through my position paper Twitter in Politics: Lessons Learned during the German Superwahljahr 2009, so that by the end of this presentation, you‘ll have an idea on how and why the German party CDU used Twitter in the campaigns of 2009 like it did.

2009 was a special year for political campaigners in Germany. This had two reasons:

One was the relative high density of high-profile elections in this year. In 2009 there were elections in five important Bundesländern, elections to the European parliament, the election of the German Bundespräsident and in autumn, the German general election.This lead to the term Superwahljahr – the year of the super election.

The second reason was Barack Obama, or rather the things Obama did to win the US presidential election, or rather the things the media thought he was doing to win the election.

The German media was quick to identify the microblogging service Twitter as a key element to Obama‘s victory. And while one can find good reasons to disagree with their assessment, Twitter suddenly became the thing to do for up and coming politicians.

As anyone knows who worked with politicians, politicians tend to be like kids with regard to the adoption of knew technology. At first they want nothing to do with anything new, but when the cool kids are flashing a new toy there is nothing more important to them than to possess exactly THAT toy. This is exactly what happened with regard to Twitter in the German political scene from late 2008 onwards.

During 2008 most German politicians kept as far away from Twitter as humanly possible only to flock to the service in the aftermath of the press-storm about the online magic the Obama campaign managed to conjure up. In late 2008 and early 2009 many German politicians regardless of party and age found their inner Twitterer – or the inner Twitterer of a lucky staff member – and started a Twitter account.

This led to considerable concern in all parties since suddenly the campaigns had a social media component that was new to German campaigns. Fortunately the high frequency of campaigns in 2009 proved to be very fortunate for exactly this challenge. Campaigns on the state and European level could be used as prototypes for elements of social media campaigning. So by the time the national campaign went into its hot phase most German parties had had the chance to get acquainted with social media and incorporate it in some way in their grand strategy.

This proved to be a very interesting time to work for political campaigns in Germany. In early 2009 I entered the campaign to reelect the Ministerpräsident of Hessia, Roland Koch. During that campaign my work focused pretty much on the use of Twitter by our online campaign, the webcamp09. Later that year I entered the national campaign for the general elections. There I also worked on the use of Twitter by the campaign but I also worked on the approach the campaign took to social media in general.

This already hints at the way the CDU treated their campaigns in the Bundesländer. These campaigns were not isolated but were used as test cases and prototypes for the use of Twitter and social media in general. Two of the most valuable prototypes for the national campaign proved to be the online campaigns in the Bundesländern Hessia and Saarland. Both campaigns centered their online campaigns with their respective volunteer campaigns, the webcamp09 and the Peter Müller Team 09. Both campaigns used Twitter feeds under the names [@webcamp09] and [@pmt09]. The experiences with these accounts led the national campaign to start a Twitter feed [@teAMDeutschland]. And in turn the lessons learned during the campaign for the general elections in 2009 led to the way the campaign to reelect the Ministerpräsident Jürgen Rüttgers uses their Twitter account [@nrwruettgers] in early 2010, a campaign which I advise on their online activities.

So which were some of the lessons learned? Twitter proved a very important tool to do some classic community building. The Twitter feeds [@webcamp09] and [@teAMDeutschland] were both used to get online supporters in contact with each other and to react to their comments or critiques.

Twitter proved to be a very successful channel for the distribution of social objects (after Hugh MacLeod). Most of the time these social objects were not content designed by the campaign but content that was either created by supporters or party candidates who strayed from the official CI.

Twitter proved also to be a very useful backchannel to campaign events. It was possible for supporters and critics alike to follow and comment on campaign events, political TV shows or the debate between Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel and the SPD candidate Frank-Walter Steinmeier through Twitter. This proved to be valuable addition to classical campaign events.

Still, the experiences with Twitter during the campaign were not completely unproblematic. One of the biggest issues raised through the widespread adoption of Twitter was a sudden surge in negative campaigning. The content that was distributed the widest through Twitter was mostly negative in nature or contained attacks on the the political opponent. This was true for all political parties. This leads to fundamental questions about the political use of social media and how we can avoid that widespread political use of social media leads to a surge in negative campaigning.

So how are the Twitter efforts of these campaigns to be evaluated. Did they decide the election? Probably not. Personally I think the most important element in the political twittering of 2009 was the active learning process that it started in the party CDU. In the final account it is nor all that important which campaign did use Twitter the best or had the most followers. In the end it matters which political party is able after a campaign to clearly articulate lessons learned and to establish processes that guarantee perpetual learning and prototyping to ensure that said party keeps in contact with its online supporters and online critics.

This was a little appetizer to the content covered in the position paper. For a more detailed discussion of the issues raised in this presentation please have a look at the position paper itself.

Thank you.

There are two ways to access this paper:
1. One as a pdf in the original CHI layout.
2. Second right here in plain html which might be easier for reading on the screen.

Still, I would be grateful that if you want to cite the paper you’d use the pdf version as authoritative.

Also, I posted the ignite talk on this blog in which I sketched this paper at the CHI2010 workshop on microblogging.

Twitter in Politics: Lessons Learned during the German Superwahljahr 2009

Abstract
In this position paper I discuss the impact of microblogging on political communication in Germany. Also, I will present lessons learned on how political actors can use microblogging services in their campaigns. These lessons are based on my work for the German CDU during two major election campaigns in 2009.

Introduction
2009 was the year in which microblogging became a relevant phenomenon in the German political sphere. The reason for this was the high frequency of elections in 2009. It proved to be a good year for political actors to experiment with new communication tools. Various elections on the German federal level and the election of the European parliament led the way to the German general election in September 2009. This high frequency of elections led to the term ‘Superwahljahr’ (year of the super election).

2009 witnessed the rapid adoption of the microblogging service Twitter by politicians, political parties and political supporters in Germany. The reason for this explosion of political Twitter feeds lies in overenthusiastic reports on the internet-success of the Obama campaign. These reports made Twitter the new must-have-item in each up-and-coming politician’s campaigning toolbox. More often than not the desire of politicians to use Twitter, or better, the desire of politicians to be seen using Twitter, led to public ridicule. Even the most skilled political microbloggers were prone to missteps. One well-publicized example is the case of Members of Parliament Ulrich Kelber and Julia Klöckner who twittered the result of the German Bundespräsidentenwahl from the floor of the house minutes before the result was officially pronounced [1]. This and other incidents led to very critical discussions of Twitter and microblogging in general. While this introduced a welcome dose of pragmatism in the debate today the tendency is to declare microblogging as inconsequential and the realm of childish hipsters and self-marketing gurus [5]. This pessimistic view does not correspond with the experiences political parties and politicians made with Twitter. In this position paper I want to discuss the applications of microblogging in politics and present some of the lessons learned during the Superwahljahr 2009.

To do so I base my observations on my own campaign activities for the German party CDU. I worked for the CDU during two mayor campaigns – Hessia 2009 and the campaign to reelect chancellor Angela Merkel in the German general elections 2009. In these campaigns my focus was on online campaigning and the use of social media channels.

Twitter in Politics
During 2009 the microblogging service Twitter has been widely adopted by the political set in Germany. Since then different variations of political twittering emerged. There were Twitter feeds by:

- politicians
- political parties
- official campaign accounts
- private feeds by political supporters

While all these exhibit different characteristics and bring with them different issues for a political campaign, there are a number of lessons learned and open questions that apply to all these political Twitter accounts.

Lessons Learned
During different campaigns in 2009 we found successful ways to use microblogging in political communication. These uses can be collected under three categories. It is important to know that we did not start with the intention of using microblogging to achieve theses tasks. Still, during our microblogging activities they emerged as the most successful usage patterns.

Microblogging as community building
At the beginning of 2009 CDU campaigns faced an online public sphere in which only a minority of CDU supporters voiced their opinions. The online supporters were few and for the most part not interconnected. The official Twitter feeds of our campaigns (@webcamp09 and @teamdeutschland) served as hubs through which online supporters could find each other and interact. We used the Twitter conventions @message and RT very consciously to foster this interaction between political supporters. In this way our microblogging feeds became tools for successful community building.

Microblogging as distribution channel for social objects
During the campaigns we found that objects like campaign posters, poster remixes, videos or links to articles were in and of itself of little importance. What mattered was the interaction of our supporters around these objects. This corresponds with the theory of the role of social objects in social media [4]. Our microblogging feeds proved to be ideal channels to point the attention of our supporters to objects on the web that might illicit further interactions among them. This use also led to a strengthening of our community building efforts through microblogging feeds.

Microblogging as communication backchannel to political events
The role of microblogging as a communication backchannel to social events has been often discussed in its positive and negative aspects [2]. During our campaigns, microblogging feeds proved to be useful communication backchannels. Be it for campaign events, which supporters at the event broadcasted through their Twitter feeds, or be it as backchannels to traditional media events (i.e. TV debates, discussion rounds or political documentaries) through which supporters discussed the events or their reactions to it. During the campaigns we made no experiences with disruptive effects of microblogging backchannels.

Open Questions
Although political actors increasingly come to terms with Twitter there remain open questions that have to be addressed if microblogging shall be used constructively in political communication:

Negativity reappears with a vengeance
Negative campaigning was always one of the more ugly aspects of political campaigns. This aspect achieves new prominence through the adoption of social media and microblogging. Experience shows that the most successful content – the content that gets distributed widely over microblogging feeds or creates the most buzz – is negative in nature or a direct attack on the political competitor. If microblogging should grow in importance for political communication this tendency towards negativity has to be consciously addressed.

Expectation management
All participants have to form more realistic and explicit expectations to the uses and desired effects of microblogging. Politicians have to be clear about what they want to achieve with their microblogging activities and how to evaluate those. The public and the media have to form expectations about constructive political microblogging. For political microblogging to emerge as a constructive element in political communication, it is not sufficient to discuss whether ‘Angela Merkel pokes back’ on Facebook or on similar platforms [6]. Finally one has to accept the realities that online activities of political actors will always be more intensive in times of political campaigns. If after elections online activities decline it is not necessarily a sign of an ‘offline autumn’ [3] but of consolidation of communication activities and a reevaluation which of these activities are sustainable during times of lower resources and different political challenges.

Embrace the Fail Whale
An active presence on Twitter by a party or a politician means that mistakes will happen. Be it directly if a political actor mistweets or indirectly when statements of a political supporter get quoted as the actual party line. If society asks of parties and politicians to open up the process of political communication, society and the media have to become more tolerant to the mistakes that will happen along the way.

Caveat
In 2009 German parties tried different approaches to the use of microblogging feeds during campaigns. The lessons presented in this position paper are based on my work for the German party CDU. These lessons therefore might be different from an analysis that would be grounded in experiences collected during work for other parties. Be that as it may, I hope these lessons might serve as a conversation starter to deepen our understanding of the function of microblogging in politics.

Acknowledgements
I thank Pascal Jürgens for much appreciated critical advice. Also I want to thank the inhabitants of the @hessenwg Dirk Koch, Alexander Kurz and Sina Marzisnki. Without those three the Superwahljahr 2009 would have been much longer and would have seemed a lot more like real work.

Citations
[1] Boie, J.: Das Zwitschern der Weinkönigin. sueddeutsche.de. 2009/05/26. .
[2] boyd, d.: spectacle at Web2.0 Expo… from my perspective.
[3] König, M.: Der deutsche Offline-Herbst. sueddeutsche.de. 2009/10/13.
[4] MacLeod, H.: more thoughts on social objects. gapingvoid.
[5] Meckel, M., Stanoevska-Slabeva, K.: Auch Zwitschern muss man üben: Wie Politiker im deutschen Bundestagswahlkampf ‘twitterten’. Neue Zürcher Zeitung. 2009/11/10.
[6] Sagatz, K.: Gruscheln mit Angela. Der Tagesspiegel. 2009/04/28.