Right-wingers on the rise online: Insights from the 2018 Swedish elections

Abstract

Political elections see several actors rise to the fore in order to influence and inform voters. Increasingly, such processes take place on social media like Facebook, where media outlets and politicians alike utilize seek promote their respective agenda. Given the recent rise of so-called hyperpartisan media—often described as purveyors of “fake news”—and populist right-wing parties across a series of western contexts, this study details the degree to which these novel actors succeed in overtaking their more mainstream or indeed established competitors when it comes to audience engagement on the mentioned platform. Focusing on the one-month period leading up to the 2018 Swedish national elections, the study finds that right-wing actors across the media and the political sector are more successful in engaging their Facebook followers than their competitors. As audience engagement is a key factor for social media success, the study closes by providing a discussion on the repercussions for professionals within the media and the political sector.

Mimicking News: How the credibility of an established tabloid is used when disseminating racism

“…Rather than arriving at an answer to how exactly such tactics take place and succeed, this research opens up for further questions of how user-participation combined with the infrastructure of a respected newspaper can produce hybrid formats that are at the borders of civility and also challenge the borders of journalistic work. As a recent study by Larsson (2019) shows, actors from the political right are particularly visible on Facebook. The tactics outlined in this paper are part of the repertoire of right-wing actors who utilise emotional and aggressive language within the format of deceptive news articles to gain user engagement and visibility.…”

Sentiment Analysis of Covid-19 Vaccination Posts on Facebook in Indonesia With Crowdtangle

“…The CrowdTangle data collection technique has been carried out several times by researchers worldwide, such as in a study conducted in Sweden to see a comparison of party accounts in attracting participants or followers on social media Facebook in the one month before the Swedish national election in 2018 (Larsson, 2020). Then data retrieval using CrowdTangle is also carried out in research on content that is attractive to the public and to see if incorrect health information gets high public attractiveness.…”

Undercurrents of echo chambers and flame wars: party political correlates of social media behavior

“…Empirical evidence shows that neoconservative populist parties may be motivating supporters to participate actively online. For example, in the Swedish political context, right-wing populist parties are perceived as being more able to evoke reactions and engage their supporters through social media platforms in the form of likes, comments, and shares (Larsson, 2019). Similarly, Hatakka (2017) shows how the FP's close (but complex) relations with loose populist online movements have leveraged party's position in the field of parliamentary politics.…”