Political organizations’ use of websites and Facebook

Abstract

The Internet offers internal and external communication opportunities to political organizations but also adds new costs and social pressure to use it in an appropriate way. This study examines whether and which political and organizational context factors explain the usage of online media by political organizations. We content-analyzed the websites and Facebook pages of 116 German-based political organizations in the policy sectors environment and health and distinguished between different aspects of “ usage”; we investigated whether an organization was present on the World Wide Web and Facebook and then scrutinized the actual level of activity on both platforms—the overall activity and the activity in different communication dimensions. By drawing this distinction, the current study sheds light on relationships that have thus far not been the focus of political organizational Internet research. While there are no clear-cut differences regarding the overall activity, there are differences in terms of linking and mobilization behavior.

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