Social Media and Politics in Central and Eastern Europe

Paweł Surowiec is Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Media and Communication at Bournemouth University, UK.Václav Štětka is Lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences at Loughborough University, UK.

"The volume by Pawel Surowiec and Václav Štětka fills an important gap in the growing body of literature on the role of digital media in political life. In this literature, the experience of Central and Eastern Europe is largely missing. The contributions of this book provide fascinating insights into how political parties and social movements use social media in a world of institutional instability and the return of authoritarianism. The book highlights the importance of context for the understanding of online politics and is a must-read for everybody who seeks to explore the politics of social media outside the Western world. It’s the similarities, not the expected differences, with the established democracies of the West that will surprise the reader." - Katrin Voltmer, Professor of Communication and Democracy, University of Leeds"This book is a very timely and telling investigation of a convoluted and potentially troubling relation between democracy and practices of social media use in political processes. Shedding light on what is still largely and regretfully uncharted territory of political social media use in post-transitional Central and Eastern Europe, the volume highlights both the mobilisation potential of social media in political processes as well as the danger of proclamation of their uniform effects. As nine case studies from the region clearly demonstrate, adoption of new digitalised communication environments into the sphere of politics is best understood as a struggle – not only with political opponents, but also with technological affordances – a struggle as diverse as the political actors using them, and the region where they come from." - Ilija Tomanić Trivundža, President of European Communication Research and Education Association ECREA"The rise of social media has changed patterns of political communication, and new patterns of political communication have altered the nature of political systems. Among other things, leaders can directly communicate with voters, undermining thereby the mediating role of traditional political parties. However, while social media are often seen as a means of maintaining the status quo and favouring incumbent political actors, they also are a potential means of mobilisation in support of newcomers and hence may challenge established actors. This excellent volume of collected studies by various authors looks into the uses of social media by political actors in some of the former communist countries and attempts to identify differences as well as recurring patterns across the region." - Péter Bajomi-Lázár, Budapest Business School

• Foreword Introduction: social media, politics and democracy in post-transition Central and Eastern Europe Part I – Political parties, actors and social mediaChapter 1: Who is afraid of the platforms? Adoption of and strategies for use of social media by politicians in the Czech Republic Chapter 2: The 2014 presidential elections campaign in Romania: connecting with civic-ness on Facebook Chapter 3: Towards self-mediatization of politics: parliamentarians' use of Facebook and Twitter in Croatia and Hungary Chapter 4: Personalization of political communication in social media: the 2014 Slovenian national election campaign Chapter 5: Professionalization and intentional disengagement: Facebook campaigning in the Bulgarian local elections in 2015 Part II: Social movements, interest and professional groups and social mediaChapter 6: We have been to Bolotnaya: Russian protests, the online public sphere and the discourse of division Chapter 7: The networked public sphere and Ukrainian journalists Chapter 8: Branding Poland online: propagating and resisting nation branding on Facebook Chapter 9: The dilemmas of social media-enabled civic activism: the case of sexual minorities in Lithuania Conclusions