The Hadia Story: Digital Storytelling in Election Campaigns

Eva Bakøy,Øyvind Kalnes

doi:10.7577/seminar.2446

Abstract

Digital storytelling in election campaigns is a relatively recent phenomenon, which needs to be investigated in order to enhance our understanding of changes and developments in modern political communication. This article is an analysis of how the Norwegian-Pakistani Labour politician, Hadia Tajik, has used digital storytelling to construct her political identity, and a discussion of the consequences of her experiments with this genre. The focus is on the five video stories she released during the 2009 parliamentary election campaign and the reactions they evoked on the net and in the traditional media during the same (time) period. During the 2009 electoral campaign Tajik moved from being a relatively unknown politician to becoming a political household name and the only member of the new Parliament with a migrant background. The digital stories were instrumental in this development for numerous reasons, the most important probably being that they gave her prime time television coverage. Norwegian news media have in general been very concerned with Web 2.0 and Tajik’s videos were regarded as an innovative kind of political communication. The videos also functioned as an effective marketing tool on the net. As an integral part of her extensive viral network, they attracted numerous views and they were with a few exceptions met with positive reactions. This was probably due to their relatively high production values and their catch-all communication strategy that downplayed her ethnic, educational and political background and emphasized her universal human qualities.

Highlights

This article is an analysis of how the Norwegian-Pakistani Labour politician, Hadia Tajiki, has used digital storytelling as a political tool
It examines the five video stories she released during the 2009 Parliament election campaign and the response they evoked on the net and in the traditional media during the same year
To explore the main functions of Tajik’s campaign videos and their relationship to the changes in political communication mentioned above, the analysis has focused on the following questions: 1. What is the main communicative strategy of the videos? 2

Summary

Introduction

This article is an analysis of how the Norwegian-Pakistani Labour politician, Hadia Tajiki, has used digital storytelling as a political tool. Businesses, politicians, government agencies and other organizations are slowly discovering the power of this mode of communication (Salmon, 2010) In this context, digital storytelling is defined more loosely as a media genre consisting of small-scale web stories with a personal mode of address, which can be used by professional or non-professional media producers alike. In Norway, where political advertising on television is not allowed,iii publishing videos on the web provides politicians with an unique opportunity to communicate multimedia messages to potential voters directly without intervention, editorship or control of anyone outside the electoral campaign Tajik embraced this chance with the support of the Labour Party and the professional multimedia company, CIK Media. The second part discusses the main purpose of Tajik’s digital stories on the basis of a qualitative text analysis, while the third part explores the role of her videos in making her a political household name, by using a number of relevant data published on the Web

Background

Summary

Findings

Conclusion