ProDem researchers Matthias Hoffmann and Christina Neumayer have published a new article titled “Movement Parties’ Interactions on Social Media: Positioning and Trajectories in the Polity Arena” in the Journal of Information, Technology & Politics. In it, they report a longitudinal analysis (2010–2021) based on data from eighteen parties’ official social media accounts in six European countries. As the authors explain, “conceptually bridging cycles of contention, social movement lifecycles, and party lifespans, this research identifies regularities in referencing patterns between traditional party families; and by adding a temporal layer, outlines three trajectories of movement parties in the polity arena. The results contribute to conceptualizing movement parties as hybrid organizations and suggest a common logic of movement in positioning in the polity arena as drivers of party-to-party interactions moderated by country-specific contextual factors”.

The article can be accessed here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19331681.2023.2239817.

Last week, Dan Mercea spoke at the annual conference of INACH (The International Network against Cyber Hate). Together with Lucy Calladine (YouTube Government Affairs and Public Policy Lead) Dan discussed the effects that social media algorithms can have on democracy. The discussion was moderated by Victoria Carasava (Project Manager at ActiveWatch Romania). Dan spoke about the changing public perceptions of social media, over the last decade, emphasizing the selective amplification and centralisation effects of algorithms on political communication. He argued for renewed accountability of social media to citiziens and the involvement of the latter in social media governance through democratic institutions.

In a new editorial headlining a special issue of Information, Communication & Society, Dan Mercea and Lorenzo Mosca set forth an agenda for studying movement party communication against the backdrop of topical questions about their purchase on democratic quality. The two members of the ProDem team reflect on how the generation of movement parties emerging in the wake of the 2007-8 financial crisis set out on a path to political innovation. These parties have “expressed greater sensitivity to neglected issues, a drive to renew links with marginalized social groups through more direct – chiefly online – communication with them as well as an ambition to overhaul both the party organization and the political system”. As such “movement parties have signalled a desire to disrupt and reimagine politics”. The latter bears renewed “critical examination against questions regarding the quality of democracy [and an apparent] mismatch between a populist rhetoric emphasizing the need for more immediate and greater participation in the party organization as well as policymaking and movement party practices”. The article is part of a series of theoretical papers that are scaffolding the ProDem project.