Naslov
What social media activities reveal about election results? The use of Facebook during the 2015 general election campaign in Croatia

Autori
Bagić Babac, Marina ; Podobnik, Vedran

Izvornik
Information Technology & People (0959-3845) 31 (2018), 2; 327-347

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

Ključne riječi
Government policy ; Content analysis ; Facebook ; Information society ; Empirical study ; Social media ; Sentiment analysis ; Social computing ; Text analysis ; Political participation ; Collective action ; General election campaign

Sažetak
Purpose – Due to the significant rise in the use of social media in recent years, this paper investigates who, how and why participates in creating content at political social networking websites utilizing a content analysis of posts and comments published on Facebook during the 2015 general election campaign in Croatia. It shows consequences of a transition from traditional to social media campaigns and the effectiveness of social media at activating and moving public opinion during the general election campaign. Design/Methodology/Approach - This study uses a data collection through a social media website, a classification of dataset items by content attributes, and a statistical analysis of the classified data. Findings – Building on empirical dataset from Croatia, this study reveals that different political parties implement different election campaign strategies on social media to influence citizens who, consequently, respond differently to each of them. Our results indicate that political messages with positive emotions evocate positive response from citizens, while neutral content is more likely to invoke negative comments and criticism, and support to the opponent. Another implication of the results is that two-way and tolerant communication of political actors increases citizen engagement, whereas unidirectional communication decreases it. Originality/Value – This paper provides an original insight into qualitative content analysis of posts and user comments published on Facebook during the 2015 general election campaign in Croatia.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Računarstvo, Politologija

POVEZANOST RADA