Does Campaigning on Social Media Make a Difference? Evidence From Candidate Use of Twitter During the 2015 and 2017 U.K. Elections

Abstract

Social media are now a routine part of political campaigns all over the world. However, studies of the impact of campaigning on social platform have thus far been limited to cross-section datasets from one election period which are vulnerable to unobserved variable bias. Hence empirical evidence on the effectiveness of political social media activity is thin. We address this deficit by analysing a novel panel dataset of political Twitter activity in the 2015 and 2017 elections in the United Kingdom. We find that Twitter based campaigning does seem to help win votes, a finding which is consistent across a variety of different model specifications including a first difference regression. The impact of Twitter use is small in absolute terms, though comparable with that of campaign spending. Our data also support the idea that effects are mediated through other communication channels, hence challenging the relevance of engaging in an interactive fashion.

A “Europe des Nations”: far right imaginative geographies and the politicization of cultural crisis on Twitter in Western Europe

“…Our research design explores how actors within these publics imagine Europe and the crisis themes that are involved in the articulations of Europe. Twitter, as a site that is geared towards the rapid circulation of texts, images, and videos is an ideal site to consider how the far right constructs imaginative geographies of Europe especially considering its growing relevance to political communication across the world (Graham et al 2013;Vaccari 2017;Bright et al 2019). Our use of the term far right digital public draws on the concept of networked publics, which are 'publics that are restructured by networked technologies' (boyd 2011, 41).…”

“…It also allows users to communicate directly with leaders, movements, parties, and one another (though recent research shows that interaction is not particularly salient despite Twitter's structure, cf. Graham et al 2013;Bright et al 2019). It also enables individuals to engage in public displays of personal political positions (cf.…”

Sustainable Political Social Media Marketing: Effects of Structural Features in Plain Text Messages

“…Based on the U.S. national election study data, Jacobson [5] argued that though voters' familiarity with candidates is not automatically advantageous, voters' evaluations of candidates do have a strong influence on how they vote. Since this study hypothesizes that elements of human interactivity and formality in plain text messages on social media engaged in political campaigns will influence one's evaluation of a politician, it is natural to consider whether the influences extend to voting intent [48]. Therefore, we propose our second research question (instead of formal hypothesis):…”

The Influence of Social Media on Political Consciousness: Presidential Election of The Gambia 2016

“…A body of empirical research demonstrates that the use of social media for election campaign is significantly on the increase. There are considerable evidence that both incumbent parties and struggling opposition parties are making increasing use of social media tools as a way of promoting their messages and candidate manifesto to electorates (Bright et al, 2017: 3).…”

“…As a result, it gives candidates the leverage during election campaigns to attract supporters who themselves produced, upload videos and photos from the campaign trail about a specific candidate and/or political party (Davis, 2014). Bright et al, (2017) postulates that indeed social media have the power to enable "personal connection" between a candidate and their prospective voters. Additionally, it is argued that there are possibility of direct engagements to occur when social media sites are used between politicians and voters.…”