Tapestries of Topics: Factors Affecting the Issue Diversity of Political Parties’ Social Media Campaigns

Melanie Magin, Anders Olof Larsson, Eli Skogerbø and Hedvig Tønnesen
Additional contact information
Melanie Magin: Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
Anders Olof Larsson: Department of Communication, Kristiania University College, Norway
Eli Skogerbø: Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo, Norway
Hedvig Tønnesen: Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

Politics and Governance, 2024, vol. 12

Abstract:

For citizens to make well-informed decisions, they require information on diverse policy issues, which, among others, are publicized on political parties’ social media accounts. However, as strategic actors, parties carefully weigh which issues to highlight and which to play down, rather than addressing a full range of issues in their campaigns. We investigated the hitherto neglected question of which issue diversity parties prioritize on their social media accounts and which factors influence this choice. We conducted a standardized content analysis of the official Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts of 10 Norwegian parties and their leaders during the 2021 national election campaign. The results of our analyses indicate that issue-related campaign strategies influence parties’ issue diversity more systematically than parties’ governing/opposition statuses and their choices of social media platforms.

Keywords: content analysis; election campaigning; issue diversity; issue ownership; Norway; platform comparison; riding the wave; social media (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/8207 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:poango:v12:y:2024:a:8207

DOI: 10.17645/pag.8207

Access Statistics for this article

Politics and Governance is currently edited by Carolina Correia

More articles in Politics and Governance from Cogitatio Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by António Vieira () and IT Department ().