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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Information Greater than Mobilisation Greater than Interaction: Contours of a Pan-European Style of Social Media Campaigning

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This chapter compares the Facebook campaigns of 90 political parties aggregated by the political groups in the EP to which they belong from 12 countries in the 2019 EP election. Based on these results we identify the contours of a pan-European style of social media campaigning that can be described as follows: national contexts dominated and framed the EP elections. In comparison to the three key functions of election campaigns, parties place the most importance by far on information in their use of social media. Calls for mobilisation play a certain role, while the parties seem hardly interested in interactions. The ongoing neglect of social media’s interactive potential in politics calls to mind that the technical infrastructure of social media creates an illusion of grassroots democracy that political actors cannot fulfil.