Social media and its role for Cypriot members of parliament in times of crisis

Social media are becoming progressively more important in the role they play in any organisation’s marketing and client-base development platform, performing a strategic function in providing information sources for everyone. Recently, for instance, microblogging services such as Twitter, along with social networking sites like Facebook, are reputed to have the potential for increasing political participation nationally and internationally. In times of crisis, social media offer a different approach to stimulate citizen engagement in political life, reshaping creative structures and methods of contemporary political communication in the way that politicians and citizens can interact with one another. The goal of this study is to investigate the current role of the social media used by Members of Parliament and politicians to reach, communicate and network with their audiences (citizens), or groups of people, in times of political change and crisis in Cyprus. A qualitative study is adopted using face-to-face interviews in order to explore the views, experiences, beliefs and motivations of individual participants in Cyprus.