Social Media For Political Communication Research Articles

Adapting Traditional Media to the Social Media Culture: A Case Study of Greece

This study is situated within the ongoing scholarly discourse surrounding the role of social media in the evolving communication landscape. The main aim of this research is to examine the extent to which the Greek traditional media and journalists have adapted to the ethos of social media. In particular, this study conducts a comparative analysis to assess whether the Greek media and journalists have effectively embraced the communication challenges arising from advancements in social media, particularly during election cycles. The theoretical foundation rests on the network theory of power, a concept pioneered by the Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells. The empirical component presents the findings obtained through an examination of journalists’ participation in political discourse on Twitter (now named X) throughout seven distinct election periods encompassing all electoral levels in Greece (presidential, national, European and regional/municipal elections, plus a referendum). The findings reveal low levels of adaptation, in contrast with western countries, where journalists and the media have embraced the online culture to a greater extent and appear to take on more prominent roles in debates. The findings provide valuable insights for journalists, politicians and the media in understanding the role of social media in political communication.

Are we Missing Some Forces? An Exploratory Study Based on Twitter Analytics of Political Communication

Several governments are leveraging social media for political communication. While the phenomenon of gate-keeping in filtering information through social media has received attention from scholars, the role of diverse meso-entities (comprising pressure groups, experts, and professionals) in influencing digital political communication remains under-studied. We explore the trend in communicating a specific program for electoral gains and identify different types of entities that reshape and disseminate political communication on Twitter, with an illustration of the launch of the public health insurance program in India. We find the significant presence of meso-level entities that played an instrumental role in influencing political communication from macro to microlevel entities through the digital platform. We extend the Jungherr, Schoen, and Jürgens (2016) framework of macro to micro-level political communication in social media by recommending a few propositions to be tested in future studies. Further, this study also contributes to information diffusion theory by explicating the role of various information intermediaries in influencing information flow from macro to micro users on social media platforms.

The role of social media in political communication: how alternative journalists illuminate information in Central America’s declining democracies

ABSTRACT Declining democracy in Central America, from oppressive policies in El Salvador and detaining journalists in Guatemala to emerging anti-press rhetoric in Costa Rica, reinforces a history of violent censorship for Latin American media, complicating journalists’ abilities to influence communication. Through interviews with journalists in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, this study analyzes the role of social media in Central American journalism. The interviews reveal that while the dominance of algorithms and information monopolies may assist financially controlled mainstream journalists, social media provide opportunities for alternative journalists in Central America to circumvent economic constraints and become more prominent gatekeeping actors in political communication. These findings indicate a shift in the news agenda, facilitated by social media but hindered by the lingering darkness of constrained media systems.

Use of Social Media for Political Communication among University Students in Bangladesh

The use of social media for political thought and expression has given the study of political communication a new dimension. We endeavored to discover in social media which political topics students found more interesting in conversation. In addition, this study combines communication theories such as uses and gratification and to analyze political interest in social media and the formation of political opinion. Specifically, we attempted to compare the extent of political communication participation based on gender and academic education. A survey reveals that male students are more involved in political communication than female students. And final year students are more engaged in political communication via social media than their first, second, and third-year counterparts. Using the quantitative method of data collection and program language R to analyze them, this study also explores students’ expression of political opinions through social media has a relationship to their political needs. The results here show that freedom of expression given in our constitution if exercised properly, students will be able to engage in political communication.

Digital Factors Influencing the Use of Social Media in Political Communication Among Thai Youths

Digital Factors Influencing the Use of Social Media in Political Communication Among Thai Youths

Political Communication through the Prism of Social Media: How are Lebanese Political Parties Using Facebook in Electoral Campaigns?

The integration of social media in political communication has expanded significantly over recent years. This article focuses on how politicians are using Facebook in electoral campaigns. The main objective is to analyse the different functions ascribed to this digital platform in electoral communication. The present research studies the usage of Facebook by political parties in Lebanon during the parliamentary election of 2018 based on quantitative content analysis. All Facebook posts of three major political parties published during the electoral campaign were collected and examined. The results of the study reveal first that most parties were using Facebook in a unidirectional way; that is, only to disseminate information without giving any real value to users’ feedback. A prime example of this was how the Future Movement, a popular political party, made significant use of external links, and effective forms of controlled Facebook tools. This demonstrated how politicians aimed to contain and direct users to their preferred information flow. Second, emerging parties from the opposition tended to publish more negative and attack posts than incumbents. Third, the interactive tools of Facebook were used poorly. Fourth, there was, however, a relative difference with regards to political groups outside the formal institution of power, such as the Political Alliance “Kollouna Watani” who made better use of the interactive function. The main factors that could explain the findings are the historical background and path of the political parties as well as their position in or outside the government, the partisan and costly coverage of traditional media outlets, and the hybridisation of political communication. Keywords: Facebook, political communication, Hybrid media system, electoral campaign, Lebanese media.

PERSONAL BRANDING GIBRAN RAKABUMING RAKA DALAM KAMPANYE PILKADA SOLO DENGAN PENGGUNAAN MEDIA BARU

The use of new media in political communication that is more today is the trend in the government, internet campaigns, online citizen political communication, as well as horizontal relations between citizens and other citizens, both in the form of virtual groups and in the context of political education between citizens. Ahead of the election, a number of educated community groups will emerge seeking to strengthen citizens' political awareness through online dissemination of political information targeting netizens. In the current era, various communication media are used to convey political messages including new media. What is the important role of social media in political communication? What is the role of social media in political communication? One of the roles of social media is to form personal branding as a person or a group. Personal branding is more about desires, skills, goals, and values. It is the result of one's hunt for fulfillment and meaning. Personal branding becomes ammunition in building the character of Gibran in this case because the authenticity of branding oneself helps minimize one's weaknesses. So it can be concluded that, first, Gibran's personal branding by utilizing all social media platforms has succeeded in building an image and generating public opinion that he is able to take advantage of advances in new media technology. Second, the COVID-19 pandemic and the presence of new media have drastically changed the political campaign system so campaign innovation in the COVID-19 pandemic era built Gibran's brand as a young politician. He was able to adapt to conditions and challenges in various conditions.

Political communication in the age of social media

The development of communication technology has penetrated human life. One form of communication technology development is new media (new media) which then gave birth to social media. The world of politics cannot be separated from the influence of the development of new media and social media. Social media are like two sides of a coin for political actors. On the one hand, the success of using social media can enable political actors to get positive support. But on the other hand, failure to take advantage of social media risks damaging the image he has. This article uses a qualitative approach to discuss the challenges and opportunities of social media for political actors. The explanation of the use of social media in political communication is the first part of this paper. The second part discusses the challenges faced by political actors in this 4.0 era The third part offers an opportunity for political actors to use social media. The fourth or final part is a conclusion that contains what political actors should do to minimize risks and maximize the opportunities offered by social media.

USING SOCIAL MEDIA FOR POLITICAL CAMPAIGN COMMUNICATION AND ITS IMPACT ON POLITICAL POLARIZATION AMONG YOUTHS IN UGANDA

The current study is aimed at examining the use of social media for political communication and its impact on the political polarization of youths in Uganda. The study specifically focuses on determining social media platforms that are often used by youths in Uganda, find out the levels of social media usage, political campaign communication, and political polarization among youths in Uganda as a result of social media usage. Lastly, the study also focuses on determining the relationship between social media platforms, social media usage, political communication, and political polarization amongst youths in Ugandans. The study adopts the uses and gratifications theory to help in guiding the study and explaining the available relationships between the variables of the study. A quantitative research design and survey method with a questionnaire as the tool for data collection were used in this study. 192 valid responses were extracted from youths residing in Kampala and Wakiso districts in Uganda as the respondents of the study. The findings of the study reveal that youths in Uganda often use Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Instagram while looking for political-related information to help them form a decision on who to give their support in the election. In addition, the study also reveals that the more the youths look for such political information, the more they become polarized because all the politicians just feed them with information that is divisive and there exists a huge amount of hatred as a result of the consumption of such information on the Ugandan internet space. The uses and gratifications theory is also supported in the study.

PEMANFATAAN MEDIA SOSIAL FACEBOOK SEBAGAI STRATEGI KOMUNIKASI POLITIK

Political candidates are actively using Facebook's social media as a political communication strategy, for which there is social interaction and interactive dialogues between the candidates and the public in virtual space, where this is needed to influence public involvement in achieving their political missions. Therefore, the objective of this study is to describe the influence of the use of social media Facebook as a political communication strategy on the electability, effectiveness, and popularity of the candidates of the DPR RI members in 2019 legislative elections. The research used theories and concepts of political communication and the use of social media in political communication, using quantitative research methods and surveys of 30 Facebook user respondents and voters in the 2019 legislative elections. The results showed there was an impact of Facebook utilization on the electability by 16%, on effectiveness by 39.7%, and on the popularity of prospective members of the DPR RI in the 2019 legislative elections by 17.3%. Users can actively collect information and opinions using this site as a place of communication between themselves with the politicians or with fellow supporters. However, the use of Facebook is not the only effective political communication strategy, traditional media such as television, radio, billboards, stickers are still effective to reach the public who do not always use social media.

Mining Social Media for Political Communication: Lessons from an Analysis of Twitter Use between Citizens and the African National Congress pre-2014 South African National Elections

ABSTRACTPolitweeting is becoming increasingly popular globally. It offers benefits to politicians and to citizens, especially during election periods. Twitter users in Africa are five times more likely to use the platform to voice their political views than those in the US and UK. Yet, few studies from African countries provide insight into such use. This paper attempts to provide insight into the use of the African National Congress (ANC) Twitter account by citizens and politicians in the run-up to the 2014 general elections. The Adaptive Structuration Theory is relevant to the study and netnography was applied to the study. Findings show that the platform was mostly used by citizens rather than the political party and its politicians. Citizens mostly engaged in political commentary amongst each other about party activities and officials. The political organisation mostly used it for image management for the party and its officials. If harnessed through planned design and implementation of digital communication strategies, social media has the potential to be used as effectively for mass communication, yet simultaneously enable interpersonal persuasion between participants, especially during times of elections.

France’s #Nuit Debout Social Movement: Young People Rising up and Moral Emotions

Set against a backdrop of austerity and neoliberal policies affecting many young people adversely, the Nuit Debout protest movement in France began in March 2016 when people gathered in public spaces to oppose the Socialist government’s plan to introduce neoliberal labour legislation. Like other post-2008 movements, Nuit Debout was leaderless, non-hierarchical, and relied on social media for political communication and to mobilise participants. The Nuit Debout was also a movement inspired by powerful moral-political emotions such as righteous anger and hope. In this article, the authors address two questions. First, what features of Nuit Debout distinguished it from earlier social movements in France? Second, what role did moral emotions play in mobilising people to act as they did? Drawing on interviews with young protestors and their own testimonies, we argue that Nuit Debout was a distinctive form of protest for France. One distinguishing feature was the way young people—the “precarious generation”—were motivated by a strong sense of situated injustice, much of which related to what they saw as the unfairness of austerity policies, being deprived of a decent future and the feeling they had been betrayed by governments.

Connecting young adults to democracy via government social network sites

Young adults’ increasing disconnection with public affairs and heavy reliance on social media for political communication suggest a strategic use of social network sites (SNS) by the government to foster relationships with young citizens and to improve their citizenship. However, scholars and practitioners have not reached consensus about the exact influence of individuals’ experience with government SNS. Focusing on young eligible voters, this study proposes and tests a conceptual model that measures the perceptual, relational, and behavioral outcomes of public engagement with government agencies on SNS. Specifically, the findings revealed a positive influence of government SNS engagement on perceived government transparency, perceived political efficacy, and public participation but to varying degrees depending on the government level (e.g., federal, state, and local). This study suggests that there is limited influence of public engagement on the perceived government-citizen relationship quality through SNS. This empirical research demonstrates how a contextualized investigation of public engagement and relationship management provides insights into the role that SNS can play in connecting young adults to democracy.

When populists become popular: comparing Facebook use by the right-wing movement Pegida and German political parties

ABSTRACTPrevious research has acknowledged the use of social media in political communication by right-wing populist parties and politicians. Less is known, however, about its pivotal role for right-wing social movements which rely on personalized messages to mobilize supporters and challenge the mainstream party system. This paper analyzes online political communication by the right-wing populist movement Pegida and German political parties. We investigate to which extent parties attract supporters of Pegida, to which extent they address topics similar to Pegida and whether their topic use has become more similar over a period of almost two years. The empirical analysis is based on Facebook posts by main accounts and individual representatives of these political groups. We first show that there are considerable overlaps in the audiences of Pegida and the new challenger in the party system, AfD. Then we use topic models to characterize topic use by party and surveyed crowdworkers to which extent they perceive the identified topics as populist communication. The results show that while Pegida and AfD talk about rather unique topics and smaller parties engage to varying degrees with the topics populists emphasize, the two governing parties CDU and SPD clearly deemphasize those. Overall, the findings indicate that the considerable attention devoted to populist actors and shifts in public opinion due to the refugee crisis have left only moderate marks in political communication within the mainstream party system.

An appraisal of the utilisation of social media for political communication in the 2011 Nigerian presidential election

The study is a survey aimed at examining the utilisation of social media for political communication during the 2011 presidential election in Nigeria. The rationale behind the study was to determine whether voters’ choice of presidential candidates was influenced by their social media use. 249 respondents selected through random sampling responded to 249 copies of questionnaire administered. The results of the descriptive statistics show that majority of the respondents’ choice of presidential candidates during the 2011 presidential election was influenced by the use of social media as indicated by high value of mean (1.5805). Similarly, the respondents were of the opinion that the two selected presidential candidates were popular because they used social media in their political campaign (mean value of 1.5575). In addition, the respondents affirmed that their voting pattern during the 2011 presidential elections was influenced by social media usage. This was validated by a high mean value of (1.6667). Similarly, the result of the test of hypothesis indicated that voters’ choice of political candidates was influenced by political communication on social media. The findings further indicated that religious affiliations and ethnicity were also factors that influenced voter’s choice of candidates. In view of the findings of this study, it was therefore concluded that social media have redefined the landscape of political communication in Nigeria and it should continue to be used in future elections in Nigeria. It is also recommended that electorate should also ensure that they deemphasized ethnic and religious considerations in their voting patterns in future elections; only credible candidates should be voted into power. Keywords: Communication, Election, Politics, and Social media

Of Echo Chambers and Contrarian Clubs: Exposure to Political Disagreement Among German and Italian Users of Twitter

Scholars have debated whether social media platforms, by allowing users to select the information to which they are exposed, may lead people to isolate themselves from viewpoints with which they disagree, thereby serving as political “echo chambers.” We investigate hypotheses concerning the circumstances under which Twitter users who communicate about elections would engage with (a) supportive, (b) oppositional, and (c) mixed political networks. Based on online surveys of representative samples of Italian and German individuals who posted at least one Twitter message about elections in 2013, we find substantial differences in the extent to which social media facilitates exposure to similar versus dissimilar political views. Our results suggest that exposure to supportive, oppositional, or mixed political networks on social media can be explained by broader patterns of political conversation (i.e., structure of offline networks) and specific habits in the political use of social media (i.e., the intensity of political discussion). These findings suggest that disagreement persists on social media even when ideological homophily is the modal outcome, and that scholars should pay more attention to specific situational and dispositional factors when evaluating the implications of social media for political communication.

Siyasal İletişim Sürecinde Sosyal Medya ve Türkiye’de 2011 Genel Seçimlerinde Twitter Kullanımı

Siyasal İletişim Sürecinde Sosyal Medya ve Türkiye’de 2011 Genel Seçimlerinde Twitter Kullanımı

KOMUNIKASI POLITIK DI ERA MEDIA SOSIAL

The development of communication technology has penetrated the lives of human beings. One form of communication is the development of new media technologies who gave birth to social media. Political world is also not free from the influence of new media and social media. Social media are like two sides of a coin for political actors. On the one hand, the success by using social media is getting positive support. But on the other hand failure by using social media is the risk by damaging the image.This paper discusses the challenges and opportunities of social media on political actors. Exposure to the use of social media in political communication becomes the first part of this paper. The second section discusses the challenges faced by political actors in the 2.0 era. The third section gives an offer opportunity for political actors in the utilization of social media. There is also the fourth and final section is a conclusion that contains what should be done by political actors to minimize the risks and maximize the opportunities offered by social media.