‘VEM SA ATT POLITIK INTE KAN VARA KUL?’.

Abstract

Executive summary The political landscape is constantly changing and influenced by outside forces. The strong connection to the traditional media has evolved to include a new important part, social media. A good way for the politics to utilize social media is through their youth associations, whose main purpose is to engage young people and spark their interest in politics. Due to the increasing influence of social media, the politicians, parties and various actors have to adapt to its demands, to be able to gain visibility on these platforms. One way to adapt is to become more entertainment driven, because these platforms are a safespace where people find time to relax and have a good time. With a growing emphasis on simplified, engaging and more fun political massages, political communication has changed its form. This phenomenon is referred to as “politainment” and encapsulates the merging of politics and entertainment. The purpose of this study is to examine and measure the frequency of politainment in Swedish political youth associations political communications. This is achieved by measuring entertaining content in the publications on the social media app TikTok, from the two largest political parties youth associations, Sveriges Socialdemokratiska Ungdomsförbund (SSU) and Moderata ungdomsförbundet (MUF). By analyzing publications from two different years, the EU election year 2024 and the non EU election year 2023, this study intends to measure and compare the occurrence of politainment. To detect if the entertaining elements in the youth associations political communication increase or decrease depending on social circumstances, as an election. Our three research questions are following; 1. How often do youth associations use entertainment in their publications in connection with the non EU election year 2023 versus the EU election year 2024? 2. How often do youth associations use political messages in their publications in connection with a non EU election year 2023 versus the EU election year 2024? 3. How often do youth associations use entertainment in their political messages in connection with the non EU election 2023 versus the EU election year 2024? To measure the frequency of politainment, a quantitative content analysis has been conducted. The TikToks, that refers to a publication on the platform, has been analysed by coding occurrences of various entertainment aspects based on TikToks affordances. These aspects include music, sound, dance, mockery, challenge, filter, visual effects and vlog. The TikToks were also coded to determine if they were political content. The analysis units that were coded amounted to a total of 484 units. The results of the study concludes that there is indeed a frequent use of the combination of entertainment and politics. When the parties communicate political messages, they also often use an entertaining aspect, such as music or a visual effect. However not to the extent we thought, since it turned out that the youth parties did not take advantage of all the entertaining possibilities available on the platform. Of the eight variables that could be coded, the average affordance used was around 1.5 in both years, with a slight increase observed in the non-election year 2023. The results also show that the youth associations show a more serious side of themselves and publish more political based content, during the election year. More entertaining content, without political messages occured to a greater extent during the non EU election year 2023. However, as social media continuously grows in power we do believe the phenomenon of politainment has only just begun to develop and it will be interesting to follow the evolution in future studies.