Virtual Mobilisation? Linking On-line and Off-line Political Participation among Swedish Facebook Users: Courtesy and Irritation

This paper is a pilot study where Swedish Facebook users are interviewed in virtual focus groups - one consisting of politically active participants and one consisting of not politically active participants - using Facebook itself as the platform. The interviews concerned the attitudes of the participants towards political campaigns and recruitment within Facebook. The preliminary results show that there are no major differences between the politically active and not politically active users. Most participants also claim that their participation in political campaigns in Facebook is a form of semi-public identity management.