Exploring User Engagement with Portuguese Political Party Pages on Facebook: Data Sprint as Workflow

  1. Martins Rosa, Jorge 2
  2. Bacaksızlar Turbic, N. Gizem 4
  3. Magalhães Telles, Alda 2
  4. González Tosat, Clara 1
  5. Jiménez Ruiz, Cristian 2
  6. Moraiti, Kalliopi 5
  7. Özgür Karadeniz, Oğuz 3
  8. Pallacci, Valentina 6
  1. 1 Universidad de Navarra
    info

    Universidad de Navarra

    Pamplona, España

    ROR https://ror.org/02rxc7m23

  2. 2 ICNOVA, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
  3. 3 KU Leuven DTAI
  4. 4 GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences
  5. 5 University of Gothenburg
    info

    University of Gothenburg

    Gotemburgo, Suecia

    ROR https://ror.org/01tm6cn81

  6. 6 Polytechnic University of Milan
    info

    Polytechnic University of Milan

    Milán, Italia

    ROR https://ror.org/01nffqt88

Mostrar afiliaciones +
Revista:
Dígitos: Revista de Comunicación Digital

ISSN: 2444-0132

Año de publicación: 2022

Número: 8

Páginas: 127-154

Tipo: Artículo

DOI: 10.7203/DRDCD.V1I8.233 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openAcceso abierto editor

Otras publicaciones en: Dígitos: Revista de Comunicación Digital

Resumen

In the broader context of a research project about political participation on Facebook during the Portuguese electoral year of 2019 - for the European Parliament in May, and for the National Parliament in October -, a dataset of more than 9,000 posts and corresponding reactions and comments had been previously retrieved using Facepager. Participating in a data sprint came up as an opportunity to explore some specific questions in an intensive and time-bound context, using a subset of the data tailored to the purpose of discovering: 1) how differently official parties tried to engage with Facebook users before, during, and after the campaigns for the major elections periods (“supply side”), and 2) what type of content received the most attention and engagement (“demand side”). Our results show that regardless of the party’s age and position in the political spectrum, the persistent main categories are “National Politics”, “Fundamental Rights”, and “Self-Promotion” for both elections. Also, we found that posts with images attract more attention, and apparently this may be leveraged if the textual content of the post is in topics of “National Politics”. However, this finding requires further investigation. Along with details about the research during the data sprint and the main findings, this paper is also a testimony about the singularities and learnings of a process built upon the constraints of taking data sprints situation as a workflow.

Referencias bibliográficas

  • Alonso-Muñoz, L. and Casero-Ripollés, A. (2020) Populism Against Europe in Social Media: The Eurosceptic Discourse on Twitter in Spain, Italy, France, and United Kingdom During the Campaign of the 2019 European Parliament Election. Frontiers in Communication 5(54): 1-12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2020.00054
  • Bene, M. (2021) Who Reaps the Benefits? A Cross-Country Investigation of the Absolute and Relative Normalization and Equalization Theses in the 2019 European Parliament Elections. New Media & Society: 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448211019688
  • Bennett, W.L. (2012) The Personalization of Politics: Political Identity, Social Media, and Changing Patterns of Participation. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 644(1): 20–39. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0002716212451428
  • Eberl, J.M., Tolochko, P., Jost, P., Heidenreich, T. and Boomgaarden, H.G. (2020) What’s in a Post? How Sentiment and Issue Salience Affect Users’ Emotional Reactions on Facebook. Journal of Information Technology & Politics 17(1): 48-65. https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2019.1710318
  • Effing, R., Jos, V.H. and Huibers, T. (2011) Social Media and Political Participation: Are facebook, Twitter and YouTube Democratizing our Political Systems? In: International Conference on Electronic Participation. Springer: 25–35. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23333-3_3
  • Enli, G.S. and Skogerbø, E. (2013) Personalized Campaigns in Party-Centred Politics: Twitter and Facebook as Arenas for Political Communication. Information, Communication & Society 16(5): 757–774. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2013.782330
  • Engesser, S., Fawzi, N. and Larsson, A. O. (2017) Populist Online Communication: Introduction to the Special Issue. Information, Communication & Society, 20(9): 1279-1292 https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2017.1328525
  • Gibson, R. (2012) From Brochureware to ‘MyBo’: An Overview of Online Elections and Campaigning. Politics 32(2): 77–84. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9256.2012.01429.x
  • Gibson, R. K. and McAllister, I. (2014) Normalising or Equalising Party Competition? Assessing the Impact of the Web on Election Campaigning. Political Studies 63(3): 529-547. https://doi.org/10.1111%2F1467-9248.12107
  • Heiss, R., Schmuck, D. and Matthes, J. (2019) What Drives Interaction in Political Actors’ Facebook Posts? Profile and Content Predictors of User Engagement and Political Actors’ Reactions. Information, Communication & Society 22(10): 1497–1513. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2018.1445273
  • Hughes, A. and van Kessel, P. (2018) ‘Anger’ Topped ‘Love’ when Facebook Users Reacted to Lawmakers’ Posts after 2016 Election, PEW Research Center, 18 July 2018. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/07/18/anger-topped-love-facebook-after-2016-election/
  • Hutto, C., and Gilbert, E. (2014). VADER: A Parsimonious Rule-Based Model for Sentiment Analysis of Social Media Text. Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 8(1), 216-225. https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/ICWSM/article/view/14550/14399
  • Junger, J. and Keyling, T. (2019) Facepager. An application for Automated Data Retrieval on the Web. Source code and releases available at https://github.com/strohne/Facepager/
  • Kalsnes, B. (2016) The Social Media Paradox Explained: Comparing Political Parties’ Facebook Strategy versus Practice. Social Media + Society 2(2): 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F2056305116644616
  • Kapoor, K.K., Tamilmani, K., Rana, N.P., Patil, P, Dwivedi, Y.K. and Nerur, S. (2018) Advances in Social Media Research: Past, Present and Future. Information Systems Frontiers 20(3): 531–558. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-017-9810-y
  • Klinger, U. (2013) Mastering the Art of Social Media. Information, Communication & Society 16(5): 717-736. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2013.782329
  • Klinger, U. and Russmann, U. (2017) Beer is more Efficient than Social Media: Political Parties and Strategic Communication in Austrian and Swiss National Elections. Journal of Information Technology & Politics 14(4): 299-313. https://doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2017.1369919
  • Larsson, A.O. (2016) Online, all the Time? A Quantitative Assessment of the Permanent Campaign on Facebook. New Media & Society 18(2): 274–292. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1461444814538798
  • Larsson, A.O. and Kalsnes, B (2014) ‘Of Course we are on Facebook’: Use and Non-use of Social Media among Swedish and Norwegian Politicians. European Journal of Communication 29(6): 653–667. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0267323114531383
  • Lilleker, D.G., Tenscher, J. and Stetka, V. (2015) Towards Hypermedia Campaigning? Perceptions of New Media’s Importance of Campaigning by Party Strategists in Comparative Perspective. Information, Communication & Society 18(7): 747–765. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2014.993679
  • Macnamara, J. (2011) Pre and Post-election 2010 Online: What Happened to the Conversation? Communication, Politics, Culture 44(2): 18–36. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.627292905802447
  • Magin, M., Podschuweit, N., Haßler, J. and Russmann, U. (2017). Campaigning in the Fourth Age of Political Communication. A Multi-method Study on the Use of Facebook by German and Austrian Parties in the 2013 National Election Campaigns. Information, Communication & Society 20(11): 1698–1719. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2016.1254269
  • Nahon, K. (2015) Where There Is Social Media There Is Politics. In A. Bruns et al. (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics: 39-55, NY: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315716299-5
  • Norris, P. (2003) Preaching to the Converted? Pluralism, Participation and Party Websites. Party Politics 9(1): 21-45. https://doi.org/10.1177/135406880391003
  • Ramos-Serrano, M., Fernández Gómez, J.D. and Pineda, A. (2018) ‘Follow the Closing of the Campaign on Streaming’: The Use of Twitter by Spanish Political Parties during the 2014 European Elections. New Media & Society 20(1): 122-140. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816660730
  • Samuel-Azran, T., Yarchi, M. and Wolfsfeld, G. (2015) Equalization versus Normalization: Facebook and the 2013 Israeli Elections. Social Media + Society 1(2): 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305115605861
  • Serra-Silva, S., Dias Carvalho, D. and Fazendeiro, J. (2018) Party-citizen Online Challenges: Portuguese Parties’ Facebook Usage and Audience Engagement. In: Lobo, M.C., Silva, F.C. and Zúquete, J.P. (eds.), Changing Societies: Legacies and Challenges. Vol. 2. Citizenship in Crisis: 185–214. https://www.ics.ulisboa.pt/books/book2/ch08.pdf
  • Sobacı, M. Z. and Hatipoğlu, Ì. (2020) Measuring the Engagement Level of Political Parties with Public on Facebook: The Case of Turkey. 2017 Conference for E-Democracy and Open Government (CeDEM): 209-216. https://doi.org/10.1109/CeDEM.2017.15
  • Stetka, V., Surowiec, P. and Mazák, J. (2019) Facebook as an Instrument of Election Campaigning and Voters’ Engagement: Comparing Czechia and Poland. European Journal of Communication 34(2): 121-141. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323118810884
  • Theocharis, Y., Barberá, P. Fazekas, Z., Adrian Popa, S. and Parnet, O. (2016) A Bad Workman Blames His Tweets: The Consequences of Citizens’ Uncivil Twitter Use When Interacting With Party Candidates. Journal of Communication 66(6): 1007-1031. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12259
  • Vogels, E. A., Auxier, B. and Anderson, M. (2021) Partisan Differences in Social Media Use Show up for Some Platforms, but not Facebook, PEW Research Center, 7 April 2021. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/07/partisan-differences-in-social-media-use-show-up-for-some-platforms-but-not-facebook/
  • Xenos, M. A., MacAfee, T. and Pole, A. (2017) Understanding Variations in User Response to Social Media Campaigns: A Study of Facebook Posts in the 2010 US Elections. New Media and Society 19(6): 826-842. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444815616617
Fuente de los datos: Dialnet