Politics. Politics are popular during every election year. ...

With all the recent buzz about weblogs in mainstream media, weblogs (referred to as “blogs”) are becoming a natural part of the media ecology. Indeed, when the Danish election for Parliament in 2005 was hastily announced, and election-themed blogs emerged all over the place, it looked like blogs would come into play for the first time in a Danish election. During the short election campaign, 52 candidates engaged in blog activity, compared to only one candidate in the 2001 Danish election. This somewhat surprising assimilation of the blog genre was clearly inspired by the blogs of U.S. presidential candidates Kerry and Dean during the U.S. campaign in 2004. From a research point of view, a unique opportunity presented itself: In a political system so different from the American as the Danish, both culturally and structurally, how would the first generation of political blogs be used? And how would these blogs be received by a Danish audience?

This was the rationale behind our study of political weblogs in Denmark in 2005, which provides an initial look at the way blogs are being integrated into online personal political campaigns. We believe that a case study of how the blog is assimilated, used and received during a clearly defined period of time should be of interest to all researchers working within the area of internet communication studies. The entry of blogs into the political field is an important step in helping us understand what makes the use of blogs a success or failure as a new form of online communication. The use of political blogs might influence the development of the genre as such, and only by studying the actual patterns of use and the impact of the blogs may we come to understand what is the true potential of this new communicative practice. In this study, we have employed two general perspectives on the use of blogs: their possible use as a medium for social interaction between politicians and citizens, and their use as a new form of personal political communication