Discontentment trumps Euphoria: Interacting with European Politicians’ migration-related messages on social media

Abstract

We investigate user engagement with politicians’ migration discourses on social media. In particular, we study the effects of message framing and support base attitudes on interactions on Facebook and Twitter in five European countries. Enriching automated analysis of social media content with survey data in a multilevel negative binomial regression approach, findings show that migration-related messages tend to elicit more interactions than other kinds of messages. Furthermore, the presence of a security frame in a migration-related message positively relates to user engagement. However, additional analyses suggest that the relevance of these frames differ between different political parties. In fact, a message gets an even higher number of interactions, when the dimension of the migration issue included in those framed messages is perceived more negatively by a party’s support base. The findings have important implications for communication strategies of political actors and the state of migration discourses on social media.

Engaging Populism? The Popularity of European Populist Political Parties on Facebook and Twitter, 2010–2020

“…The difference on Twitter is particularly large and indicates that populists had contingent, circumstantial advantages on the platform, even if they did not experience greater overall engagement. On the other hand, engagement did not noticeably shift in relation to refugee numbers, despite findings that the issue attracted extensive engagement (Heidenreich et al 2022). This discrepancy is likely a function of how refugees are counted by the World Bank since the data represent the location of asylum claims, underestimating the influx of transient migrants in countries including Greece, Hungary, and Italy.…”

“…Posts about immigration, a central issue for most right-wing political parties, attract high rates of engagement on Facebook (Bene et al 2022). During the European "refugee crisis" in 2015, politicians' Facebook and Twitter posts about migration received more interactions than those on any other topic (Heidenreich et al 2022). The evidence linking other variants of populism to engagement is less conclusive.…”

Victims or Attackers? Deconstructing the Mediatic Image of Migrants at the Romanian-Serbian-Hungarian Border with the Use of Multidimensional Instruments

“…(Cacciatore et al, 2016). The framing method is also used by the media when conveying messages sent by authorities or politicians in relation to the migration policy (Heidenreich et al, 2022). When there are very few identifiers, the media content becomes almost neutral in terms of placing migrants in the above mentioned categories, but their profile becomes quite unclear.…”

Divisive Issues, Polarization, and Users’ Reactions on Facebook: Comparing Campaigning in Latin America

“…Anger plays an important role in explaining the link between threat and affective polarization (Renström et al, 2023). Therefore, individuals are likely to develop extreme opinions toward divisive issues, and such emotionally charged policy fields are considered to have a polarizing characteristic (Lee, 2021;Nguyen et al, 2022;Wojcieszak et al, 2018) and trigger users' reactions (Bene et al, 2022;Heidenreich et al, 2022). Nevertheless, these topics may change depending on the context.…”