The Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenshipwith the support of the Chaire de recherche sur la démocratie, le vivre-ensemble et les valeurs communes presents :
Studying Political Actors on Social Media – Current Challenges and Opportunities
Anders Olaf Larsson (Kristiania University College, Department of Communications, Oslo, Norway)
When : April 17, 2026, 3 – 4:30 pm
Where : Thomson House, Boardroom 404, 3650 McTavish, Montreal, QC H3A 1X1
Social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram have become essential parts of political communication efforts in a series of countries and contexts. Studying the uses of platforms such as these at the hands of political actors – parties and politicians – seeking office is an established genre of communication and political science research. As this field of research into online practices continues to mature, we can discern a series of challenges facing the scholarly community focused on assessing online political communication. For my presentation in Montreal, I would like to discuss what I perceive as three of the major challenges facing this specified area of research, showing how the identified challenges as emerging from the literature can be reinterpreted as opportunities for empirically-driven research into the online activities of political actors. Specifically, the three challenges pointed to are the dearth of reliable alternatives for data collection; the need for more longitudinal approaches; and the neeed for comparative approches – be it across countries, platforms or some other variable of interest. Having identified these issues, I will then illustrate how I have tried to approach them through recent research projects such as Take Action Now! A Longitudinal Study of Political Party Calls to Action Across Social Media Platforms (Larsson, 2025) and Going Negative Across Platforms and Time – Assessing the Supply and Demand of Negative Campaigning (Larsson, Forthcoming).
Larsson, A. O. (2025). Take Action Now! A Longitudinal Study of Political Party Calls to Action Across Social Media Platforms. Social Science Computer Review, 0(0), 08944393251390890. https://doi.org/10.1177/08944393251390890
Larsson, A.O. (Forthcoming). Going Negative Across Platforms and Time – Assessing the Supply and Demand of Negative Campaigning. Forthcoming in New Media & Society.
The Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship is funded by the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC).