Purpose

The paper intends to explore the role and function of citizen-led social media forums in the marketing of political discourse. Using the entrepreneurial marketing (EM) perspective of “co-creation of value”, this paper aims to explore the manner in which consumers of political communications in a specific region have created user generated value via setting up Facebook forums to manage the risk created by fake news and the trust deficit between citizens and mainstream media (MSM).

Design/methodology/approach

The paper adopts a “netnographic” approach to investigation and the data is analysed manual coding (Kozinets, 2015). Facebook groups form the virtual research field in in the context of this study. This approach is adopted because in a social media environment, netnography capitalises over a growing virtual and online communities and allows researchers to study the richness of these online communities (Mkono and Markwell, 2014).

Findings

The study provides insights on how administrators and moderators of Facebook groups create value for other users by identifying and communicating the risks emerging from social media-based political communication. The study finds that such citizen-led initiatives act as online social aggregators. The value that such groups offer its users/members resides within a well-bound, controlled and moderated online medium that encourages users to counter fake news and misinformation – thereby solving a key problem within the user market i.e. citizen-media trust deficit.

Research limitations/implications

The study uses a qualitative, netnographic approach and the emerging insights cannot be generalised. The emergent findings are specific to the context of this study and researchers are encouraged to further test the propositions emerging from this research in varied contexts.

Practical implications

The study extends the application of EM in political contexts using the seven dimensions of EM, which will provide impetus for future political campaigns in terms of unique value creation for publics. The paper also emerges with the role citizen-initiated forums can play in the effective dissemination of digital political communication as user generated content is aiding political debate.

Social implications

The study helps highlight the role Facebook forums can play in informing the political discourse within a region. The general distrust amongst the citizens over information produced by MSM has meant vocal critics have taken to Facebook to provide their subjective opinions. Although the findings of this study show that such forums can help identify “fake news” and help citizens discuss and debate the truth, it can also become an avenue to manage propaganda amongst the “unaware” citizens. This paper flags up the issues and benefits of using Facebook forums and in conclusion relates them to similar occurrences of the past to make society aware of the pitfalls of managed propaganda.

Originality/value

The paper takes initiative in investigating the use of social media in politics from the citizens’ perspective, which is comparatively marginalised against the number of studies taking place, which investigate the political party end use of social media for political marketing.

中文翻译：

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企业家营销和数字政治传播–公民主导的社会媒体在政治话语中作用的观点

目的

本文旨在探讨公民主导的社交媒体论坛在政治话语营销中的作用和功能。本文使用企业家营销（EM）的“共同创造价值”观点，旨在探讨特定区域的政治传播消费者通过建立Facebook论坛来管理由用户创造的风险来创造用户创造价值的方式。虚假新闻以及公民与主流媒体（MSM）之间的信任不足。

设计/方法/方法

本文采用“民族志”方法进行调查，并对数据进行手动编码分析（Kozinets，2015年）。在本研究的背景下，Facebook小组构成了虚拟研究领域。之所以采用这种方法，是因为在社交媒体环境中，网络志可以利用不断增长的虚拟和在线社区的资本，并使研究人员能够研究这些在线社区的丰富性（Mkono和Markwell，2014年）。

发现

这项研究提供了有关Facebook团体的管理员和主持人如何通过识别和交流基于社交媒体的政治传播中出现的风险为其他用户创造价值的见解。该研究发现，这种由公民主导的举措可以充当在线社交聚合器。这些组织为其用户/成员提供的价值在于一个约束良好，受控且经过审核的在线媒体，该媒体鼓励用户反击虚假新闻和虚假信息，从而解决了用户市场中的一个关键问题，即公民媒体信任不足。

研究局限/意义

The study uses a qualitative, netnographic approach and the emerging insights cannot be generalised. The emergent findings are specific to the context of this study and researchers are encouraged to further test the propositions emerging from this research in varied contexts.

Practical implications

The study extends the application of EM in political contexts using the seven dimensions of EM, which will provide impetus for future political campaigns in terms of unique value creation for publics. The paper also emerges with the role citizen-initiated forums can play in the effective dissemination of digital political communication as user generated content is aiding political debate.

Social implications

这项研究有助于凸显Facebook论坛在宣传某个地区的政治言论中可以发挥的作用。公民之间普遍对MSM产生的信息不信任，这意味着声音批评家已将他们带到Facebook上来提供他们的主观意见。尽管这项研究的结果表明，这样的论坛可以帮助识别“虚假新闻”并帮助公民讨论和辩论真相，但它也可以成为在“无意识”公民中进行宣传的途径。本文提出了使用Facebook论坛的问题和好处，并得出结论，它们与过去发生的类似事件有关，以使社会意识到管理性宣传的弊端。

创意/价值

本文从公民的角度主动调查了社交媒体在政治中的使用情况，但相对于正在研究政党将社交媒体最终用于政治营销的研究数量而言，该研究相对处于边缘地位。