Abstract
Since a number of years the use of social media in political processes appears to have had a significant effect on the political landscape. Irrespective of advantages or disadvantages of such technologies scholars have revealed great differences in how digital technologies have been adopted among subnational entities. Citizens risk facing substantial varieties in preconditions for the utilization of digitally based tools based on their residency. In this book chapter on Swedish municipalities adoption of social media both descriptions and patterns explaining variation in such adoption are studied. Findings indicate that an overwhelming majority of Swedish municipalities use social media. Based on the time period applied it can also be noticed that this proportion has increased annually. The explanatory models reveal particularly two noteworthy findings. First, larger municipalities with an already well-developed website are more inclined to adopt social media. As an additional predictor, municipalities with certain funding for democratic development shows a similar pattern. Second, when assessing municipalities versatility in social media usage two of the these predictors show relevance. Lager municipalities with an advanced website are more inclined to utilize social media for different reasons. Since this book chapter shows that certain resources, such as an already developed website and a larger population, will pose influence on social media usage the distribution of this form of digital technology can be distributed unequal over societies.
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- 1.
The exact formulation is: Does the municipality presently use social media at the internet in its communication with the citizens?
- 2.
This information was explicitly given in the survey conducted in 2016 making this material possible to analyze in terms of how municipalities describe their purpose of social media usage.
- 3.
It is a summative index measuring if the following items are present on municipalities’ websites: timetable for meetings for the municipal assembly, the protocols of the municipal assembly, discussion forum, and documents for the municipal assembly, municipal regulations, online diary, information concerning parties participating in the governing of the municipality, the possibility to send messages to politicians. Hence, this index ranges from 0–8.
- 4.
Two such examples are to be reported: (i) a bivariate analysis examining relationship between local governing (left, right or across blocs) and the index of social media usage shows no significant relationship and are therefore not included for assuring enough degree of freedom (ii) a measurement of income levels are excluded for avoiding multicollinearity due to strong correlation with the variable measuring education levels.
- 5.
A Pearsons Chi-Square test results in the test value of 25.097 (p < 0.000).
- 6.
In model 2 the only municipality that scored a 4 on the index of social media usage is excluded.
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Lidén, G. (2018). Challenges of Digital Politics at the Subnational Level in Sweden: Descriptions and Explanations of Social Media Usage. In: Sobacı, M., Hatipoğlu, İ. (eds) Sub-National Democracy and Politics Through Social Media. Public Administration and Information Technology, vol 29. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73386-9_3
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