Mid Sweden University

Political parties in Western democracies have undergone major processes of transformation in the past decades. With the ending of the ´mass parties' and the formation of the ´catch-all' party, parties find themselves now confronted with a crisis to their representative role and struggle to combat declining membership numbers, growing perceptions of alienation towards party politics, and a re-orientation of people´s political participation towards other forms of organizing and expressing political opinions. Moreover, these processes are embedded in a context of the web 2.0 and where social media is providing new ways of communication, sharing, informing and connecting. Although social media offers a profound range of how political parties may be able to counteract the problems of increasing disenchantment with party politics, decline in party members and re-strengthening their ties with voters, parties appear to not fully deploy their opportunities for winning back the support and interest of voters, especially the young generations. The purpose of this study is to examine the development of political parties in a new digital setting and describe the ways in which political parties make use of social media in campaigning to particularly address young people. In their fighting against growing decline in membership numbers and political support, it will be claimed that political parties need to redefine their strategies for attracting the youth's political interest and for mobilizing this particular group of young voters. Especially since young people tend to inhabit a more self-evident handling and perception of digital media, parties should aim to use these channels more efficiently to provide attractive ways for young voters to participate and express their political interest. By examining the eight Swedish parliamentary parties' usage Facebook as a social network channel, it will be analyzed how they currently address the young voters or the youth more generally, and in particular which topics political parties publish on social media in order to link with young people.