Political Marketing and Social Media in Greece of 2019

Abstract

Social media is one of the new forms of communication with the public and their use has been extended to a political level. Their features, such as the ability to create dialogue, quick personalized contact, and better targeting have made them one of the main channels of communication for political and non political promotion purposes. Nowadays, their increasingly important role in elections is more than evident. On the one hand, political behavior is largely related to the influence of communication to refer to the exchange of messages between individuals or groups for the purpose of information transfer and mutual influence. On the other hand, at political level, political groups or candidates seek ways to communicate as effectively as possible with the public in order to cope with intense competition. In this context, social media tools are used in order to transmit information to the voters. In addition, in Greece, the influence of social media on political participation and political behavior has not been extensively researched. For this reason, this paper examines the influence of social media on political participation and behavior, using a questionnaire for the electoral period from 5 th May until 5 th June . The results shows that the interest of users of social media in politics is modest, despite the fact that politics are quite important to them, as well as the influence of promotional messages on users can be described as above average. Respondents believing that political promotional messages placed on social media can shape political reality.