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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Campaigning for Strasbourg on Facebook: Introduction to a 12-Country Comparison on Parties’ Facebook Campaigns in the 2019 European Parliament Election

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European Parliament (EP) elections provide an ideal context for comparative studies on the communication strategies of political parties at national and European level. The 2019 EP election campaign allows analysing how the different political parties use Facebook to inform, interact with and mobilise voters. The study of the electoral campaign also enables the identification of differences and similarities between countries and between parties. This chapter introduces an edited volume that presents results of a quantitative content analysis of more than 12,000 Facebook posts published by political parties from 12 European countries in the last four weeks before the 2019 EP election. It describes the contemporary context of the election that resulted in a more fragmented parliament where the major parties have lost their hegemony.