“Politics as usual?” Explaining the use of online communication by political interest groups in Switzerland

Abstract

This paper tries to explain the use of different online communication tools by political interest groups in Switzerland. Theoretically, the different online instruments employed are conceptualized as a group’s (online) communication repertoire. This theoretical framework helps to highlight the fact that the instruments a political interest group is using are dependent on characteristic factors either inside or outside of a given organization. The adoption of different online communication tools is hypothesized to be influenced by the media and political environment an interest group is active in, as well as its organizational capacities and incentives. Survey data from 887 politically active interest groups in Switzerland is used to test these hypotheses. Subsequent logit regression models show that the results can best be summarized as “politics as usual” – there is only little support for the assumption that online communication is rather used by smaller, financially weak, fringe organizations.