Kryzys przywództwa politycznego w twitterowej komunikacji wyborczej na przykładzie samorządowej kampanii prezydenckiej

Abstract

The Crisis of Political Leadership in Twitter Electoral Communication on the Example of Local Government Presidential Campaign The aim of the study is to consider whether Twitter’s electoral communication reflects a crisis of political leadership. After analysing the content of tweets published by candidates in the 2018 election of the mayor of Warsaw and measuring the degree of engagement of their followers, the answer to this question is ambiguous. The existence of a leadership crisis is supported by the emphasis of politicians on image issues (presentations of campaign activity focused on the person of the candidate with the important role of the politician’s commentary) and the high degree of supporters’ engagement in non-programme content compared to programmatic content. On the other hand, significant differences in the level of occurrence of program topics between candidates show that Twitter does not determine the resignation from the strategy of building relationships with supporters in the context of program goals.