I’m finally done with my examination of political parties Facebook use, and my initial optimism based on the interviews has somewhat dwindled. The official pages and groups have little activity. Some users post questions, some try to start discussions, but there is little evidence that politicans are replying. When they do, it is often with the same standard political answer you’ve heard a thousand times before. There are exceptions, though, and I think that with a little more effort, and a little more training in how to present your message in social media, things would improve.
Jens Stoltenberg and Siv Jensen, leaders of the two biggest parties, are a bit more active than the others, and there is a lot of discussion going on among users. Høyre is asking for voter input in policy creation, and several of the parties have started groups for or against different issues. Venstre and Senterpartiet mostly use their groups and pages to publish notes with links to news on their own web pages, which of course means that there is little user acitivty and dialogue going on.
My preliminary conclusion is that most of them are trying, some are succeding in some areas, but that all of them still have a long way to go if they want to grab voter support from Facebook.
