Motives and Structures: Analyzing Motivational and Structural Dynamics in Online Communications of Political Interest Organizations.

This paper focuses on the motivational and structural dynamics of the online communications of political interest organizations. Instead of describing political interest organizations as fully rational and strategic players, we develop a theoretical framework that establishes an alternative view of political interest organizations by characterizing them as actors that are also dependent on their institutional environment. The basic assumption of this framework is that there is no unidirectional relationship between motives and structures and the online communication activities. Instead, there is a dynamic interplay of motives, structures, environmental conditions, and online communication. Against this theoretical background, we discuss findings from an interview study of the online communications of political interest organizations in the healthcare and environment policy fields. The aim of this study was not to resolve the debate on whether political organizations communicate "strategically" or not. Instead, we examined the "black box" of organizations in order to understand the motivational and structural dynamics that constitute the organizations' online communications efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]