Does Campaigning on Social Media Make a Difference? Evidence from candidate use of Twitter during the 2015 and 2017 UK Elections

Social media are now a routine part of political campaigns all over the world. However, studies of the impact of campaigning on social platform have thus far been limited to cross-sectional datasets from one election period which are vulnerable to unobserved variable bias. Hence empirical evidence on the effectiveness of political social media activity is thin. We address this deficit by analysing a novel panel dataset of political Twitter activity in the 2015 and 2017 elections in the United Kingdom. We find that Twitter based campaigning does seem to help win votes, a finding which is consistent across a variety of different model specifications including a first difference regression. The impact of Twitter use is small in absolute terms, though comparable with that of campaign spending. Our data also support the idea that effects are mediated through other communication channels, hence challenging the relevance of engaging in an interactive fashion

Reaching, engaging and bonding with voters on social media: the case of 2014/2015 Croatian presidential elections

This paper examines the ways in which presidential candidates use social media in their election campaigns to democratise politics and political representation. The study is based on content analysis of statements which candidates in 2014/2015 Croatian presidential elections published on their official Facebook and Twitter accounts. The results show that candidates did not use social media to reach, engage and form stronger bonds with potential voters. By failing to do so, they have missed the opportunity to bring disenchanted voters back into the political arena and potentially increase the legitimacy of the democratic processes

Reaching, engaging and bonding with voters on social media: the case of 2014/2015 Croatian presidential elections

This paper examines the ways in which presidential candidates use social media in their election campaigns to democratise politics and political representation. The study is based on content analysis of statements which candidates in 2014/2015 Croatian presidential elections published on their official Facebook and Twitter accounts. The results show that candidates did not use social media to reach, engage and form stronger bonds with potential voters. By failing to do so, they have missed the opportunity to bring disenchanted voters back into the political arena and potentially increase the legitimacy of the democratic processes

Social Media, Money, and Politics: Campaign Finance in the 2016 US Congressional Cycle

With social media penetration deepening among both citizens and political figures, there is a pressing need to understand whether and how political use of major platforms is electorally influential. Particularly, the literature focused on campaign usage is thin and often describe the engagement strategies of politicians or attempt to quantify the impact of social media engagement on political learning, participation, or voting. Few have considered implications for campaign fundraising despite its recognized importance in American politics. This paper is the first to quantify a financial payoff for social media campaigning. Drawing on candidate-level data from Facebook and Twitter, Google Trends, Wikipedia page views, and Federal Election Commission (FEC) donation records, we analyze the relationship between the topic and volume of social media content and campaign funds received by all 108 candidates in the 2016 US Senate general elections. By applying an unsupervised learning approach to identify themes in candidate content across the platforms, we find that more frequent posting overall and of issue-related content are associated with higher donation income when controlling for incumbency, state population, and information-seeking about a candidate, though campaigning-related content has a stronger effect than the latter when the number rather than value of donations is considered.Comment: Under review. Main article + Supplementary Informatio

Campaigning as a Spitzenkandidat: are lead candidates aligned with their party's manifesto?

Nowadays, political actors use Twitter as one of the main online tools to campaign and connect to their constituencies, and so do "Spitzenkandidaten". The "Spitzenkandidat" process, which was initially implemented in 2014, is a widely researched topic. However, with campaign personalization, being one of its main drivers, it is surprising to see the lack of literature on the subject specifically connected to the lead candidates in the Twitter sphere. This study is filling the gap in the academic literature by answering the question: "To what extent the 2019 Spitzenkandidaten represented their party's manifestos via their tweets or develop individualized campaigns?". The results reveal that the 2019 "Spitzenkandidaten" do not focus on personalization as a main tool in their Twitter behavior. Furthermore, the study shows how factors like the age of the candidate, their party orientation and whether candidates tweet or retweet more, is influencing the outcome.Atualmente, o Twitter é uma das ferramentas online de eleição entre os atores políticos para fazerem campanha e estabelecerem uma ligação com os seus eleitorados, e o mesmo acontece com os "Spitzenkandidaten". O processo de "Spitzenkandidat", inicialmente implementado em 2014, tem sido um tema amplamente investigado. No entanto, com a personalização das campanhas a representar um dos principais fatores impulsionadores, é surpreendente ver a escassez de literatura sobre o assunto e, em particular, literatura relacionada com os principais candidatos na esfera do Twitter. Este estudo vem colmatar a lacuna na literatura académica ao responder à pergunta: "Até que ponto os Spitzenkandidaten de 2019 representaram os programas do seu partido através dos seus tweets ou desenvolveram campanhas individualizadas?". Os resultados revelam que os "Spitzenkandidaten" de 2019 não se centram na personalização como ferramenta principal no seu comportamento no Twitter. Além disso, o estudo demonstra de que forma fatores como a idade do candidato, a sua orientação partidária e se os candidatos fazem mais tweets ou retweets, têm influência no resultado

Electoral Campaigns, Media, and the New World of Digital Politics

Today, political leaders and candidates for office must campaign in a multimedia world through traditional forums—newspapers, radio, and television—as well as new digital media, particularly social media. Electoral Campaigns, Media, and the New World of Digital Politics chronicles how Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, email, and memes are used successfully and unsuccessfully to influence elections. Each of these platforms have different affordances and reach various audiences in different ways. Campaigns often have to wage different campaigns on each of these mediums. In some instances, they are crucial in altering coverage in the mainstream media. In others, digital media remains underutilized and undeveloped. As has always been the case in politics, outcomes that depend on economic and social conditions often dictate people’s readiness for certain messages. However, the method and content of those messages has changed with great consequences for the health and future of democracy. This book answers several questions: How do candidates/parties reach audiences that are preoccupied, inattentive, amorphous, and bombarded with so many other messages? How do they cope with the speed of media reporting in a continuous news cycle that demands instantaneous responses? How has media fragmentation altered the campaign styles and content of campaign communication, and general campaign discourse? Finally and most critically, what does this mean for how democracies function

The far-right’s influence on Twitter during the 2018 Andalusian elections: an approach through political leaders

New technologies allow politicians to spread their messages omitting the role of mediators. In this context, the Internet has also promoted the emergence of a new actor, digital opinion leaders, who go beyond traditional politics and seek to set the public agenda. One of the main questions nowadays is whether social media, and in particular Twitter as a consolidated tool for political communication, is only used as a sounding board for their political statements, spurring the messages of populist forces. With this in mind, the main objective of this research is to explore the influence of the far-right in the public debate of political leaders on Twitter, analyzing the specific case of the Andalusian regional elections held in December 2018. These elections can be considered a political turning point, with an extreme right party winning seats in a Spanish regional election for the first time in 35 years. In this paper we analyze if Vox used a differentiated strategy via this social network compared to the candidates of the traditional parties: PSOE, PP, Ciudadanos, and Adelante Andalucía. Using content analysis on Twitter as a method, this research determines how Vox candidates worked as influencers of the digital political debate, despite being extra-parliamentary. Vox marked the agenda for the rest of the leaders, while generating great expectation among the audience