Ainara Larrondo

By Ainara Larrondo and Irati Agirreazkuenaga

The organisational websites and second-generation web-based technologies like social media have led organisations to alter their activities and strategies both internally and externally. This marriage between Internet and organisations is especially relevant in the case of political organisations like parties. Politics in our society is basically media politics, based on socialised communication and the capacity to influence people’s opinions. Online communication has had a direct influence on the parties’ publics and the relations with them: on one side, the citizens, and on the other, the mass media and journalists. While top-down adaptations by organisations generally prove more costly or are even non-existent, what we are witnessing is a horizontal type of adaptation [2]. This gives the political class and press offices the opportunity to descend to ‘street level’ using the tools provided by the web, as well as to become direct communicators that replace the media’s traditional work of interpretation. In this context, this chapter offers results from a study (EHUA13/10) centred on understanding how political parties have adapted their communication strategies to meet the challenges of the multimedia paradigm. For that purpose, it focuses on a concrete case and on political parties with representation in the Basque autonomous parliament.

Part of the book: The Evolution of Media Communication