Facebook as an instrument of election campaigning and voters’ engagement: Comparing Czechia and Poland

Abstract

Adding to the growing scholarship on the use and role of social media in election campaigning, this article examines and compares the character and determinants of Internet users' engagement with political party communication in 2013 and 2015 Parliamentary election campaigns in Czechia and Poland. Apart from the relationship between the thematic focus of party-produced content and the level of users' interactivity, the study also explores the way the tonality of users' comments is influenced by different types of party communication, as well as by users' gender. The results suggest that the level of support for a party status is largely independent of the content of the message in both countries. The type of content has, however, an effect on the intensity of criticism by the users, with policy-related subjects generating more negativity than mobilization-or campaign-oriented statuses. Finally, the study points to both gender gaps and gender as a strong predictor of user negativity, as female users-while constituting a minority of participants in both countries-tend to be significantly less negative in their comments towards the home party. Overall, the comparative study reveals both similarities and differences in the way Czech and Polish parties utilize Facebook as campaign platform, as well as in their respective Internet users' engagement with parties messages.

Estrategias comunicativas en Facebook: personalización y construcción de comunidad en las elecciones de 2016 en España

“…La literatura previa coincide, no obstante, al señalar que la relación entre actores políticos y ciudadanía se sitúa en un contexto de influencia. Así, partidos y líderes políticos tienden a utilizar las redes sociales como una herramienta para la movilización efectiva de los votantes y la difusión de información sobre eventos de campaña (Stetka, Surowiec & Mazák, 2019;Williams & Gulati, 2013). Estudios como el de Valera-Ordaz (2019) constatan que, en las elecciones generales celebradas en 2015 en España, algunas formaciones políticas aprovecharon las páginas de Facebook para potenciar la construcción de comunidad y cohesión social con personas de ideas afines a su programa político.…”

“…Las estrategias identificadas en este estudio refuerzan la idea de que Facebook es una buena herramienta para la movilización de la participación y el voto (Bene, 2018;Di Bonito, 2014;Stetka, Surowiec & Mazák, 2019;Vesnic-Alujevic, 2012;Williams & Gulati, 2013), aunque se usa en mayor medida para aportar información sobre contenidos interesados, especialmente para la autopromoción de actos de campaña y promesas electorales (Sampietro & Valera-Ordaz, 2015).…”

Engagement entre políticos y seguidores en Facebook. El caso de las elecciones generales de 2016 en España

“…En cuanto a la movilización, los actores políticos recurren a Facebook para pedir el voto o invitar a los usuarios a asistir a sus actos (Bene, 2018;Stetka et al, 2019), aunque algunos también se arriesgan con acciones más atrevidas, como…”

Selling Insecurity via Twitter: Ukrainian President’s Posts and Modern Political Discourse

“…Social networks have been undermining the traditional channels of political information broadcast because of their "accessibility and availability" (Schneiker, 2019), inexpensiveness, simplicity and rapidity of message spreading (Matuszewski, Szabó, 2019), "ability to debate in real time" (López-Rabadán, Mellado, 2019), "the word-ofmouth-like nature" (Guerrero-Solé, 2018) and the potential to directly communicate with large audiences (Pérez-Curiel, Naharro, 2019). Twitter and other social media give a possibility to omit selection mechanisms of mass media and their "gate-keeping role" (Stetka, Surowiec, 2019). Twitter may be used by some politicians for "an ongoing press conference" (McGranahan, 2019) and is an important tool for political campaigns (Lee, Xu, 2018).…”