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Sweden's Feminists win social media battle

The Local Sweden
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Sweden's Feminists win social media battle
Gudrun Schyman and Soraya Post celebrate the party's election success when Post was elected to the EU parliament. Pontus Lundahl/TT

Fresh from their success in the EU elections Sweden's Feminist Initiative has also earned plaudits for its social media approach by claiming far more fans and followers than their political rivals.

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Check out the Facebook pages for Sweden's political parties and there is a clear winner - Feministiskt initiativ. The party, which was founded in 2005, has 86,725 likes on the social media site. 

By contrast, election favourites the Social Democrats (Socialdemokraterna) have 66,313 likes. Prime Minister Frederik Reinfeldt's Moderate Party (Moderaterna) has just 28,000.

"The Feminist Initiative has in every respect made a big impression. The party's Facebook and Twitter presences are quite exceptional. They have succeeded in mobilizing voters digitally and are very active," Hampus Brynolf of PR firm Intellecta Corporte told the TT news agency.

Indeed, FI has the most likes of all the Swedish political parties on Facebook and has the most active Twitter account too.

The party's founder Gudrun Schyman has racked up 64,000 followers on Twitter and regularly interacts with users.

"It's a bit of a chicken and egg discussion but we can note that both FI and Gudrun Schyman have had an enormous impact. But my understanding of this is that FI themselves have actively driven this development in spite of their limited economic resources," added Brynolf.

Schyman's Twitter alias @gudschy is the most active Swedish political account on the microblogging site after the FI's own Twitter profile.

Centre Party leader Annie Lööf (32.3K), Pirate Party leader Anna Troberg (6.4K) and the Green Party (32.8k) are also among the most active on Twitter.

Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Åkesson (43.8) doubled his number of followers over the weekend but still has a long way to go to catch up with Sweden's kingpin of Twitter Carl Bildt who has 297,000 monitoring his tweets. 

A media analyst estimated that exposure of FI and the Pirate Party rocketed by over 450 percent during April and May in advance of the EU elections.

Outside of Sweden the party generated headlines with a UK tabloid putting FI alongside far-right extremists Golden Dawn in a headline.

FI politician Soraya Post scooped the party's first seat in the European Parliament after running on a feminist ticket.

The Local/pr 

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