Politicians’ use of Facebook during elections. Use of emotionally-based discourse, personalization, social media engagement and vividness

Date17 September 2018
Published date17 September 2018
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-03-2018-0067
Pages551-572
AuthorJenny Bronstein,Noa Aharony,Judit Bar-Ilan
Subject MatterLibrary & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management
Politiciansuse of Facebook
during elections
Use of emotionally-based
discourse, personalization, social media
engagement and vividness
Jenny Bronstein, Noa Aharony and Judit Bar-Ilan
Department of Information Science, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand the use of Facebook by Israeli party leaders during an
election period by examining four elements: the type of Aristotelian language of persuasion;the level of online
engagement measured by three different types of feedback: likes, comments and shares; the use of
personalization elements as engagement strategies; and the vividness features used in the post (text,
photographs and video).
Design/methodology/approach All of the posts from the Facebook pages of ten Israeli party leaders
were collected for 45 days prior to the 2015 general elections. The number of posts, likes, comments and
shares in each post were captured and the data were analyzed looking for elements of Aristotelian persuasion
and of online engagement with the users.
Findings The dominance of pathos was a salient element in the data demonstrating the politiciansneed to
create an affective alliance with the public and it was the element that resulted in a higher number of likes,
shares and comments. Only a few relationships were found and these do not point to a clear relationship
between multimedia use and social media engagement. The interactive, open and free nature of social
networking sites contributes to their development as a new type of political podia that allow politicians to
produce a different kind of political communication. Instead of using these sites as platforms to disseminate
their ideas, plans and strategies, politicians focus their interactions with the audience on the creation and
maintenance of affective alliances.
Originality/value The study contributes to the existing literature on the subject by examining four
characteristics of the politicianspersonal profiles on social networks simultaneously while most of the past
studies have focused on only one or two of these characteristics.
Keywords Politics, Social networking sites, Elections, Aristotelian persuasion,
Social media engagement, Vividness
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Electoral campaigns have taken advantage of new technologies since radio and television
facilitated the spread of campaign messages more effectively and efficiently through the
airwaves and enabled candidates to engage with large numbers of voters (Towner and
Dulio, 2012). During the last few years, social networking sites have also been integrated
into political campaigns because they enable politicians to promote themselves freely and to
communicate interactively with the electorate and to disseminate information freely without
the interference of traditional media and have become semi-public and semi-private spaces
where politicians can involve users in online personal encounters (Gunn and Skogerbø, 2013;
Quinlan et al., 2018; Russmann and Svensson, 2017) because characteristic features of these
online spaces facilitate the dissemination of information. Users can redistribute a piece of
information by sharing it, acknowledge it by liking it and they can interact with other users
by commenting on a post. These three features have transformed social networking sites
into powerful tools in political communication (Larsson, 2017b). Therefore, the use of social
networking sites in electoral campaigns has become a necessity in recent times ( Justinussen,
2015) developing into an alternative information source for user-generated content
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 70 No. 5, 2018
pp. 551-572
© Emerald PublishingLimited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-03-2018-0067
Received 19 March 2018
Revised 11 June 2018
Accepted 13 August 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/2050-3806.htm
551
Politiciansuse
of Facebook
during
elections
(English et al., 2011) that has become portable, personal, participatory, pervasive and linked
(Rainie, 2017). The importance of social media as a platform for the dissemination of
information has become evident in recent years. According to a recent Pew Internet survey,
65 percent of adults reported using social networking sites (Perrin, 2015) and Facebook
reported in its last company report that the number of active daily users has grown from
526m in March of 2012 to 890m in December of 2014 (Facebook, 2014).
Research dealing with the use of social networking sites as political platforms has examined
both sides of the issue. On the one hand, studies have focused on the use of social networking
sitesasplatformsofpoliticalengagementandcivic participation of voters (Aharony, 2012;
Baumgartner and Morris, 2010; Bronstein and Aharony, 2015; Hanson et al., 2010; Heiss et al.,
2018; Kushin and Yamamoto, 2010; Pasek et al., 2009; Xenos et al., 2017). On the other hand,
other studies have investigated the way that politicians utilizesocial networking sites as political
platforms during election campaigns mostly to disseminate information (Holtz-Bacha et al., 2014;
LaMarre and Suzuki-Lambrecht, 2013; Paul and Perreault, 2018; Quinlan et al., 2018;
Samuel-Azran et al., 2018; Xue, 2014; Yarchi and Samuel-Azran, 2018). Since Obamas 2008
election campaign, social networking sites in political contexts have been hailed for their
democratic and participatory potentials (Vaccari, 2010) for increasing the publics engagement
with relevant interactive content (Xu and Sundar, 2014). Several studies have documented
politiciansuse of social media for the recruitment of volunteers, organization of the campaign,
mobilization and fundraising (Bronstein, 2013; Davis, 2017; Enli and Skogerbø, 2013; Erikson,
2008; Justinussen, 2015; Parmelee and Bichard, 2011). However, the possibility of direct
interaction with users has weakened the partiesand the candidatesability to retain control of
their messages (Gueorguieva, 2008) and has resulted in them tailoring their messages to retain
control over their online presence (Bronstein, 2013).
The aim of this study is to understand politiciansuse of social networking sites to
communicate and disseminate information by examining the personal Facebook pages of party
leaders during the 2015 Israeli general election campaign. Th e study contributes to the existing
literature on the subject by examining four distinct characteristics of the politicianspersonal
profiles on social networking sites simultaneously while most of the past studies have focused
on only one or two of these character istics. The four elements examined are: the type of
Aristotelian language of persuasion that consists of three elements: ethos/credibility, pathos/
emotion and logos/reason focusing on the use of emotional-based content; the level of social
media engagement measured by three different types of feedback: likes, comments and shares;
the use of personalization elements as engagement strategies; and the vividness features used
in the post (text, photographs and video); and the contents of the posts were analyzed to
identify the major themes discussed in the politicianspages. These four parameters of analysis
allow a deeper understanding of the social networking sites as platforms for information
dissemination by examining the type of information disseminated, the subjects discussed by
the politicians and the ways that they chose to present the information posted.
Literature survey
This study examined three concepts that appear as central elements in the study of social
networking sites as political platforms:
(1) Political personalization: it is defined as a dynamic process that consists of an
increase in the weight of the individual political actor and a decline in the weight of
the group (i.e. political party) in politics over time(Rahat and Sheafer, 2007, p. 3).
(2) Social media engagement: engagement has been defined as the consumers intrinsic
motivation to interact and cooperate with community members(Algesheimer et al.,
2005, p. 21). In social media environments, it is measured through actions such as
likes, shares and comments (Bene, 2017; Kietzmann et al., 2011).
552
AJIM
70,5

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT