Political Transparency in the Media: The Old Media’s Influence on Politicians’ Twitter Behaviour

Abstract

“Later today with my son to a football match: Heerenveen – Excelsior. It has been a long time since I was on a football stand. # Looking forward!” (Rouvoet, 02-04-2011, Twitter) This is a Tweet posted by Andre Rouvoet at the time that he was a politician. Significantly, he was a political figure who made his private activities transparent through a public medium. In this way, his Tweet denotes an important change in political communication, which has taken place over the past few decades. Ever since the fifties, the old media has been blurring the border between the private and public sphere, and has increased the transparency of politicians. (Pels, 2003, p. 42) Also the new media have the potential to continue this trend, as is demonstrated by Rouvoet’s Tweet. The distinction between old and new media will be maintained in the rest of this paper. The old media are defined as non-interactive print- and electronic media, such as newspapers and TV-programs. (Chun & Keenan, 2006, p. 284) To be more precise, this paper especially focuses on the popular and commercial part of the old media. The new media will be defined as online and interactive forms of mass communication, such as weblogs, Twitter and Facebook. (Ibid, p. 3) The fact that Rouvoet’s Tweet follows the trend that is visible in various older media, makes it interesting to investigate the extent to which other politicians copy these trends as well. This can reveal how influential this trend actually is, since politics is one of the parts of society in which the distinctions between the public and private sphere is most prominent. Therefore, this paper will be centred on the research question: To what extent does the way in which Dutch politicians use Twitter, reflect the dominant trend in the majority of the old media?