Abstract
The digital landscape of communication that can be found in new media offers very innovative resources for political discourse and can differ greatly from the traditional methods and ways of mass communication. The potential in this variation is based on new opportunities which have developed with regard to their linguistic, communicative and medium-specific qualities, and it has been shown that this transformation is by no means at an end. At the same time, first results suggest that formerly accepted rules of discourse and the socially implied linguistic characteristics of different registers will have to be adapted or redefined. In this context, the future forms and purposes of political discourse will depend significantly on the competent identification and habitualisation of these new functional domains of language use and their interactive layouts and technical implementations by political protagonists.
