The Social Psychological Explanations for the Effects of Social Media Marketing and Traditional Media on Voting Intentions

Abstract

ABSTRACT Politicians use social media to drive voting intentions. The authors draw on self-enhancement and uncertainty reduction elements of social identity theory to present a framework that merges media data and social media sentiment toward the candidate to predict voting intentions. The authors estimate econometric models to data collected during the Brazilian presidential elections. The results support the influence of posts’ sentiment toward the candidate, owned social media, earned social media, and the candidate’s number of followers. They unveil social psychological pathways in driving intentions: a self-enhancement, an uncertainty reduction path, and an interaction between candidate’s number of followers and traditional earned media.