Naslov
Emotionalization and Privatization of Political Communication on Facebook

Autori
Vučković, Milica ; Oblak Črnič, Tanja

Izvornik
Medijske studije (1847-9758) 11 (2021), 22; 3-23

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Radovi u časopisima, članak, znanstveni

Ključne riječi
personalization, emotionalization, social media, Barack Obama, content analysis, Facebook

Sažetak
Social media are usually accused of being one of the major forces for personalization of ‏political communication and consequently for depolitization of recent politics. However, personalization ‏seems to stimulate certain users to pay more attention to political issues and to act more responsively to ‏such highly personalized political profiles. This article presents the results of a longitudinal analysis of ‏online presence of Barack Obama to assess his political communication through Facebook. It also answers ‏if presence of emotional appeals and private life cues in the posts have any effect on users’ responses in‏ terms of numbers of their likes, comments and shares. Based on a quantitative analysis of 2804 Facebook ‏posts, published in the period from 2008 to 2016, the results of content analysis revealed that Obama ‏used his Facebook fan page almost exclusively to communicate about political issues instead of his ‏personal life. The analysis also confirmed that a smaller number of posts, which contained emotional ‏appeals or cues from private life had significantly higher numbers of users’ responses than posts that ‏were not emotionalized or privatized. While personalization of Obama’s political figure is part of a wider‏ debate, this study confirms that the presence of private cues and emotional appeals stimulates greater‏ responsiveness from Facebook users.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Informacijske i komunikacijske znanosti

POVEZANOST RADA