3,686 research outputs found

    Social Media Battles: their Impact during the 2014 Greek Municipal Elections

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    The purpose of this study is to examine the use of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube by candidates running for the 2014 Greek Municipal Elections by addressing the following questions: (1) which factors affect social media adoption by municipal candidates?, and (2) whether social media usage along with the popularity of candidates' social media pages influence candidates' vote share. Results indicate that social media are not very popular campaigning tools among municipal candidates in Greece. This implies that Greek candidates still rely on traditional ways to lure their voters. Furthermore, findings reveal that candidates running in large municipalities are more likely to utilize social media (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube) as means of political marketing. In addition, challengers seem to prefer Facebook and Twitter as campaign tools while males tend to focus on YouTube to attract voters. Despite the low adoption rate, results suggest that candidates who made use of social media won more votes compared to candidates who were not social media users. Moreover, it was found that a candidate's Facebook page and YouTube channel popularity are good indicators of the candidate's vote share

    Incentives for the adoption of e-government by Greek municipalities

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    Purpose: The research aims to identify the incentives that play an important role in the evolution of e-government in Greece at local scale and its actual development level. It also investigates the factors and the perceived barriers that affect the development of local egovernment in Greek Municipalities, as well as the benefits they derive from it. Design/Methodology/Approach: The research is based on a survey that was conducted through a questionnaire to all 325 Municipalities of the country and includes data from 109 Municipalities that participated in the quantitative approach. Findings: While e-government is spread at a relatively satisfactory level, it appears that only a few Municipalities are performing well. Results highlight also the two main incentives that motivate Municipalities to adopt e-government: The first is the improvement of the efficiency of information exchange with the external environment and the second is managing internal issues-relationships in conjunction with the existence of prominent IT departments. Amongst the main factors that affect e-government adoption by Local authorities, budgetary constraints stand out, while the lack of personnel specialized in Information Technologies is identified as common obstacle. Practical Implications: Findings suggest that an integrated approach to e-government is needed in order to enable organizations to minimize failures and to overcome barriers and counter risks. The capacity to align e-government applications with the increasing and evolving needs and requirements of the citizens is the key to optimizing the benefits of eGovernment at local scale. Originality/Value: There is no similar empirical research in the context of Greece; hence, it seems important to increase the knowledge about the drivers of e-government adoption, especially in the public sector at the local scale.peer-reviewe

    Like, share, vote

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    This report explores the potential for social media to support efforts to get out the vote. Overview Across Europe, low voter turnout in European and national elections is a growing concern. Many citizens are disengaged from the political process, threatening the health of our democracies. At the same time, the increasingly prominent role that social media plays in our lives and its function as a new digital public space offers new opportunities to reengage non-voters. This report explores the potential for social media to support efforts to get out the vote. It lays out which groups need to be the focus of voter mobilisation efforts, and makes the case for using social media campaigning as a core part of our voter mobilisation efforts. The research draws on a series of social media voter mobilisation workshops run by Demos with small third sector organisations in six target countries across Europe, as well as expert interviews, literature review and social media analysis. Having affirmed the need for and utility of social media voter turnout efforts, Like, Share, Vote establishes key principles and techniques for a successful social media campaign: how to listen to the digital discourse of your audience, how to use quizzes and interactive approaches, how to micro-target specific groups and how to coordinate offline events with online campaigns. This report concludes that, with more of our social and political lives taking place online than ever before, failing to use social media to reinvigorate our democracy would be a real missed opportunity

    Persistence and Activation of Right-Wing Political Ideology

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    We investigate the persistence of right-wing ideology in Germany. The “Alternative for Germany” (AfD), founded as a party espousing fiscal conservatism, has turned to an openly nationalist and anti-immigrant platform since 2015. We document this rhetorical change with quantitative text analysis. We further show that municipalities that voted more for the AfD after 2015 also exhibited higher support for the Nazi party in the 1920s and 30s. The historical correlation we observe is positive, significant, and large. In our preferred specification, a one standard deviation increase in historical support for the Nazi party is associated with a 0.15 standard deviations larger change in votes towards the AfD. Our results are robust to controlling for a large set of historical and contemporary covariates, especially relating to unemployment and the recent inflow of refugees from the Middle East

    Persistence and Activation of Right-Wing Political Ideology

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    We investigate the persistence of right-wing ideology in Germany. The “Alternative for Germany” (AfD), founded as a party espousing fiscal conservatism, has turned to an openly nationalist and anti-immigrant platform since 2015. We document this rhetorical change with quantitative text analysis. We further show that municipalities that voted more for the AfD after 2015 also exhibited higher support for the Nazi party in the 1920s and 30s. The historical correlation we observe is positive, significant, and large. In our preferred specification, a one standard deviation increase in historical support for the Nazi party is associated with a 0.15 standard deviations larger change in votes towards the AfD. Our results are robust to controlling for a large set of historical and contemporary covariates, especially relating to unemployment and the recent inflow of refugees from the Middle East

    National report: Croatia

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    The chapter reports the findings of the analysis of 2019 European Parliament election campaign in Croatia

    Examining if a candidate’s presence on Facebook and Twitter creates favorable public opinion and is a predictor of vote share in city council elections

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    Although a considerable amount of research has proved that the use of social media by candidates fighting national elections has resulted in success, like the Obama campaign of 2008 (Hughes et al., 2010) and the Trump campaign of 2016 (Williams et al., 2018) it is still unclear whether the use of social media by candidates has any impact on local city council elections in the U.S. Focusing on the 2021 Knoxville City Council election, this study investigates whether candidates that had a social media presence, posted on social media more frequently than their opponent in the four weeks before Election Day and allocated more funds to running campaign ads on social media ended up winning the race. Furthermore, it also examines public opinion about political ads on social media, social media effectiveness and candidate interaction through social media. The results from secondary data accessed from the Knox County Election Commission office and social media showed that candidates with social media profiles on Facebook and Twitter, a higher number of social media followers and more frequent posts on Facebook and Twitter were successful in the 2021 Knoxville city council elections. However, higher spending on social media ads wasn\u27t necessarily correlated to electoral success. Two candidates with lesser followers and lesser social media posts who spent more on running ads lost the election. The survey findings (n=14) also indicated that voters felt “very fatigued” after consuming political social media ads and the general perception was negative. However, respondents were positive when it came to using social media as a tool to share information and solve civic issues in the city. Previous research (Krebs 1998) has stated that incumbency, party support and campaign spending were determinants in city council elections; this study extended those findings to add social media usage by candidates as an important element in predicting electoral success at the city council level. Keywords: social media and city council elections, local elections campaigning, political campaigns on Facebook, city council researc

    Essays on the political economy of populism

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