ABSTRACT

This paper examines how Facebook is used by political parties during elections to extend or accelerate their reach within the electorate and how successful these efforts are. Specifically, we compare the content and style of parties’ Facebook posts during the 2014 European parliament elections, and how this affects followers’ responses in terms of liking, sharing and commenting on the posts. Our findings reveal while that the timing and visual content of posts are important in increasing voters’ attention, interactivity matters most. Responsive party posts on Facebooks are significantly more likely to be shared, liked, and commented on by users. Given that follower reactions, particularly sharing, helps to increase the visibility of party communication through indirect or two-step flow communication (online and offline), these findings are important in advancing our understanding of how and why social media campaigns are able to influence voters and thus affect election outcomes. For parties themselves the results provide some useful insights into what makes for an ‘effective’ Facebook campaign in terms of how they can accelerate the reach of their communication.

摘要

本文研究了政党在选举期间如何使用 Facebook 来扩大或加速他们在选民中的影响力，以及这些努力的成功程度。具体而言，我们比较了 2014 年欧洲议会选举期间政党 Facebook 帖子的内容和风格，以及这如何影响追随者对帖子的喜欢、分享和评论的反应。我们的研究结果表明，虽然帖子的时间和视觉内容对于提高选民的注意力很重要，但交互性最重要。Facebook 上的响应式派对帖子更容易被用户分享、喜欢和评论。鉴于追随者的反应，尤其是分享，有助于通过间接或两步流交流（在线和离线）提高聚会交流的可见性，这些发现对于加深我们对社交媒体运动如何以及为何能够影响选民并进而影响选举结果的理解非常重要。对于各方而言，结果提供了一些有用的见解，让他们可以了解如何在加速传播范围方面进行“有效”的 Facebook 活动。