Measuring the Engagement Level of Political Parties with Public on Facebook: The Case of Turkey

Abstract

Political parties have not been indifferent to the opportunities offered by the internet-based technologies. Today, political parties use the social media tools to communicate, organize and mobilize. However, few studies focus on the use of social media by the political parties and these studies analyze the use of social media in election campaigns. Therefore, in the relevant literature, there is a need for empirical studies to analyze the use of social media for political communication by political parties during nonelection periods. In this context, this study, using a metrics set, aims to analyze the engagement level and engagement type of the political parties with public in Turkey on Facebook as a social media tool in a non-election period. The findings of our analysis show that the engagement level of the political parties with public on Facebook in Turkey is low. Moreover, political parties in Turkey fail to communicate with the public in a bidirectional way on Facebook.