Tapestry of topics. Factors affecting the issue diversity of parties’ social media campaigns.

Abstract

<p>Citizens’ well-informed decision making requires information on diverse policy issues which they, among others, can find on political parties’ social media accounts. However, as strategic actors, parties carefully weigh up which issues to highlight and which to neglect rather than addressing the full range of issues in their campaigns. Taking Norway as an example, we investigate the hitherto neglected question which issue diversity parties provide on their social media accounts and which factors systematically influence it. We answer it by means of a standardized content analysis of the official Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts of ten parties and their party leaders during the 2021 national election campaign. Our analyses indicate that political factors – issue-related campaign strategies and party characteristics (governing/opposition parties, mainstream/challenger parties) exert a more systematic influence on parties’ issue diversity than characteristics of the social media platforms. There seem to be interaction effects between some of these factors that should be examined more closely in future research.</p>