Amplification and Virtual Back-Patting

This chapter intends to explore the rationalities of politicians' social media uses in web-campaigning in a party-based democracy. I will do this from an in-depth case study of a Swedish Liberal Party politician, Nina Larsson, who with the help of a PR- agency utilized several social media platforms in her campaign to become re-elected to the Swedish Parliament in 2010. By analysing how and for what purposes Larsson used social media in her web-campaign, this chapter concludes that even though discourses of instrumental rationality, to strategically target specific voter groups, and of communicative rationality, to establish loci for electorate-politician deliberations, were common to make her practices relevant, Nina primarily used social media to amplify certain offline news media texts by recirculating them in her social media networks as well as to commend and support other liberal party members. Hence from this case the chapter concludes that web-campaigning on social media are also used for expressive purposes, to negotiate and maintaing an attractive political image within the party hierarchy. </p