Interest groups and social media: An examination of cause and sectional groups' social media strategies in the EU

Published date01 August 2017
AuthorDirenç Kanol,Muesser Nat
Date01 August 2017
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1649
ACADEMIC PAPER
Interest groups and social media: An examination of cause and
sectional groups' social media strategies in the EU
Direnç Kanol
1
|Muesser Nat
2
1
Political Science, Near East University,
Nicosia, Turkey
2
Cyprus International University, Nicosia,
Turkey
Correspondence
Direnç Kanol, Political Science, Near East
University, Near East Boulevard, ZIP: 99138,
Lefkosa Mersin 10, Turkey.
Email: direda@yahoo.co.uk
This paper examines social media use by cause and sectional interest groups in the European Union.
The literature suggests that cause groups should focus on building a constituency more than
sectional groups, because they do not offer exclusive benefitsto their members. Cause groups face
collective action problems more than sectional groups, so they have to take a proactive approach to
community building. The nature of the causes cause groups lobby for is also more suitable for pro-
test and thus calls to action. An indepth analysis of a random sample of 1,000 tweets by cause and
sectionalgroups reveals differences with respect to social media use. Cause groups use social media
to pursue twoway communication with the public slightlyalbeit not significantlymorethan sec-
tional groups. Cause groups mobilise the public to take action significantly and substantively more
than specific interests.
1|INTRODUCTION
Currently, the dominant method of communication on the Web is
social media, which consists of internetbased applications that
facilitate the creation and exchange of usergenerated content,
enabling realtime and twoway communication between people.
There are various types of social media applications, for example,
Wikipediatype collaborative projects and blogs, social networking
sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and virtual environments. Social
networking sites, which are of such high popularity, allow users to
connect by creating personal profiles, inviting friends, and sharing all
sorts of information, including photos, videos, and audio files (Kaplan
& Haenlein, 2010).
In a recent essay, Brown (2013) tries to shift the attention of
interest group scholars towards the relevance of technology in
interest groups' activities. Some scholars now share Brown's (2013)
concern that the Internet, in general, and social media, in particular,
are becoming increasingly integrated into interest groups' daytoday
activities and are influencing the nature and outcomes of lobbying
and rebalancing power dynamics between different groups. For
example, Eyal (2016) examines the impact of nongovernmental
organizations' (NGOs) digital fit,which refers to digitally related
tools that enable actors to disseminate their advocacy messages.
The author finds that organisations with a digital fit advantage
attract media coverage more effectively, which, in turn, increases
their political influence. Eyal (2016) suggests that new technologies
can restructure the power balance among NGOs in that those which
were unable to exert meaningful influence on the policy process
before the advent of newer technologies may now compete with
powerful NGOs. Therefore, information communication systems
such as social media have become indispensable tools for interest
groups.
A distinction can be made between two types of interest groups
based on their relationship with their members: sectional groups and
cause groups. Sectional groups are representative of a segment of soci-
ety, such as teachers or farmers. These groups work primarily for the
benefit of their members, and these members come from those
segments of society represented by that group. Cause groups, on the
other hand, are focused on issuessuch as environmental protection
which benefit society at large. Members of cause groups do not
necessarily come from a specific segment of society. Regarding social
media use by cause and sectional interest groups, the existing research
only examines if one or the other type has a greater social media
presence (e.g., Brown, 2016; Chalmers & Shotton, 2016). Therefore,
an indepth study of a large representative sample of interest groups'
social media strategies is necessary to better understand differences
and similarities between these groups' social media usage.
This paper contributes to literature by investigating the use of
Twitter by cause and sectional groups. The authors use Lovejoy and
Saxton's (2012) informationcommunityaction scheme, created for
classifying tweets and for analysing a random sample of 1,000 tweets
by cause and sectional groups in the European Union (EU). The results
suggest differences with respect to use of social media by these differ-
ent types of groups. Section 2 discusses the stateoftheart in interest
groups and social media literature. In Section 3, we outline our theoret-
ical expectations with respect to the use of informationcommunity
Received: 8 May 2016 Revised: 20 September 2016 Accepted: 8 January 2017
DOI: 10.1002/pa.1649
J Public Affairs. 2017;17:e1649.
https://doi:org.10.1002/pa.1649
Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1of6

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