0000000000010743
AUTHOR
Anna-katharina Wurst
Keep Them Engaged! Investigating the Effects of Self-centered Social Media Communication Style on User Engagement in 12 European Countries
On Facebook, patterns of user engagement largely shape what types of political contents citizens can see on the platform. Higher engagement leads to higher visibility. Therefore, one of the major goals of political actors' Facebook communication is to produce content with the potential to provoke user engagement, and thereby increase their own visibility. This study introduces the concept of self-centered social media communication style which focuses on 'salient' and 'owned' issues with populist and negative appeals and investigates how user engagement is related to its main elements. We also explore how users' receptivity to these content-related factors is shaped by country context. More…
Reaching Out to the Europeans. Political Parties’ Facebook Strategies of Issue Ownership and the Second-Order Character of European Election Campaigns
The European Election campaign 2019 enjoyed heightened attention in the European and global public due to the recent emergence of populist actors, new parties, and large European issues such as immigration, climate change, and Brexit. Starting theoretically from the issue ownership theory, shareworthiness, and the second-order character of European elections, the study at hand investigates the campaigns of 69 parties from 9 countries on Facebook as one of the current central spheres of electoral contest. Facebook enables parties to provide users with selected issues considered advantageous for themselves. The number of posts’ shares indicates whether the parties manage to reach out to the v…
European Issues, but National Campaigning of German Parties
Germany is a political and economic heavyweight in the European Union and political issues that demand for European solutions rather than national policies, like migration or climate change, gained importance on the German public agenda in recent years. Nonetheless, EP elections regularly have the status of second-order elections when it comes to campaigning efforts as well as voter turnout. In 2019, the election turnout was extraordinarily high, and as this chapter shows, German parties focused on political issues mostly addressing the EU level. Implementing successful Facebook campaigns by initiating user engagement and emphasising issues ‘owned’ by their parties, the Greens and the right…