Skip to main content

Getting More Intense: Quantitative and Qualitative Dynamics of Political Communication on Facebook

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The 2019 European Electoral Campaign

Abstract

This chapter highlights the trends in parties’ social media efforts in terms of intensity, pace, and dynamics. Despite a somewhat homogenizing effect of Facebook as a medium, we detected differences in parties’ strategies. To explain them, we explored various factors and a key element is the presence or absence of concurrent election(s) and, above all, the timing of those within the EP campaign.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Among EU countries, the use of FB for news exposure ranges from about one out of four internet users (the UK pre-Brexit, Germany) to four out of five (Bulgaria), about half of them in many cases (Czech Republic, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain) and always far ahead from any other social media.

  2. 2.

    We measured the strength of association between each possible pair of categorical variables (Cramér’s V).

  3. 3.

    Information about discarded posts is lacking for five parties, hence we took them out of the Table 2.4.

References

  • Bossetta, M. (2018). The Digital Architectures of Social Media: Comparing Political Campaigning on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat in the 2016 U.S. Election. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 95(2), 471–496.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Casero-Ripollés, A., Feenstra, R. A., Tormey, S. (2016). Old and New Media Logics in an Electoral Campaign: The Case of Podemos and the Two-Way Street Mediatization of Politics. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 21(3), 378–397.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ceccobelli, D. (2018). Not every day is Election Day: a comparative analysis of eighteen election campaigns on Facebook, Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 15(2), 122–141.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Elder, E., & Phillips, J. B. (2017). Appeals to the Hispanic Demographic: Targeting through Facebook Autoplay Videos by the Clinton Campaign during the 2015/2016 Presidential Primaries. Journal of Political Marketing, 16(3–4), 319–342.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Enli, G. S., & Skogerbø, E. (2013). Personalized campaigns in party-centred politics. Information, Communication & Society, 16(5), 757–774.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Erikson, R. S., & Wlezien, C. (2012). The Timeline of presidential elections: How campaigns do (and do not) matter. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Ernst, N., Engesser, S., Büchel, F., Blassnig, S. & Esser, F. (2017). Extreme parties and populism: an analysis of Facebook and Twitter across six countries. Information, Communication & Society, 20(9), 1347–1364.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Esser, F. (2019). Comparative international studies of election campaign communication: What should happen next?. Journalism, 20(8), 1124–1138.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gerodimos, R., Justinussen, J. (2015). Obama’s 2012 Facebook Campaign: Political Communication in the Age of the Like Button. Journal of Information Technology and Politics, 12 (2), 113–132.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hendricks, J. A., Schill, D. (2014). Presidential Campaigning and Social Media. An Analysis of the 2012 Campaign. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holbrook, T. M. (1996). Do campaigns matter? Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Koc-Michalska, K., Lilleker, D. (2019). Political communities on Facebook across 28 European countries. Questions de communication, 36, 245–265.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Koc-Michalska, K., Vallée, O. (2019). Les élections présidentielles: un événement politique en ligne. Les acteurs politiques et leur performance sur Facebook lors des élections présidentielles françaises de 2012, Sciences de la Société, 102, 151–167.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kreiss, D., & McGregor, S.C. (2018). Technology Firms Shape Political Communication: The Work of Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and Google With Campaigns During the 2016 U.S. Presidential Cycle, Political Communication, 35:2, 155–177.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Larsson, A. O., & Kalsnes, B. (2014). ‘Of course we are on Facebook’: Use and non-use of social media among Swedish and Norwegian politicians. European Journal of Communication, 29(6), 1–16.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lilleker, D. G., Tenscher, J., Štětka, V. (2015). Towards hyper-media campaigning? Perceptions of new media’s importance for campaigning by party strategists in comparative perspective. Information, Communication and Society, 18(7), 747–765.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Magin, M., Podschuweit, N., Haßler, J. & Russmann, U. (2017). Campaigning in the fourth age of political communication. A multi-method study on the use of Facebook by German and Austrian parties in the 2013 national election campaigns, Information, Communication & Society, 20(11), 1698–1719.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Metz, M., Kruikemeier, S., & Lecheler S. (2020). Personalization of politics on Facebook: examining the content and effects of professional, emotional and private self-personalization. Information, Communication & Society, 23(10), 1481–1498.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Newman, N., Fletcher, R., Kalogeropoulos, A., Nielsen, R. K. (2019). Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2019. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Oxford. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/inline-files/DNR_2019_FINAL.pdf. Accessed 1 April 2021.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nielsen, R. K., Vaccari, C. (2013). Do People “Like” Politicians on Facebook? Not really. Large-Scale Direct Candidate-to-Voter Online Communication as an Outlier Phenomenon. International Journal of Communication, 7, 1–24.

    Google Scholar 

  • Przeworski, A., & Teune, H. (1970). The logic of comparative social inquiry. New York: John Wiley and sons.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stetka, V., Surowiec, P., Mazák, J. (2019). Facebook as an instrument of election campaigning and voters’ engagement: Comparing Czechia and Poland. European Journal of Communication, 34(2), 121–141.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Theocharis, Y., Jungherr, A. (2020). Computational Social Science and the Study of Political Communication. Political Communication, Ahead-of-print, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2020.1833121.

  • Zhang, F., Tanupabrungsun, S., Hemsley, J., Robinson, J. L., Semaan, B., Bryant, L., Stromer-Galley, J., Boichak, O., & Hegde, Y. (2017). “Strategic Temporality on Social Media During the General Election of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Campaign”. #SMSociety17: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Social Media & Society. https://doi.org/10.1145/3097286.3097311.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alexandre Borrell .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Borrell, A., Jadot, A., Lefébure, P. (2022). Getting More Intense: Quantitative and Qualitative Dynamics of Political Communication on Facebook. In: Novelli, E., Johansson, B., Wring, D. (eds) The 2019 European Electoral Campaign. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98993-4_3

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics