USER MOBILIZATION AND PARTICIPATION IN ONLINE POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS. A CASE STUDY FROM ROMANIA

Abstract

The rapid development of the internet and online social networks, together with the increasing number of users have led to a growing use of online social networks in the political field both by citizens and political actors. In this context, more and more studies have started to argue the use of social media as stimulators of dialogue, interactivity and feedback. Even if the literature on this subject is extensive for the Western democracies, the case is different for the emerging democracies, like Romania. Therefore, this paper aims at gaining insight into the use of online social networks by Romanian political actors as triggers of online participation and mobilization, namely engagement manifested through Facebook buttons like, comment and share. In order to do so, we selected the Romanian political campaigns from 2014 (presidential elections) and 2016 (parliamentary elections) and conducted a content and statistical analysis on the posts published on politicians’ official Facebook pages over the four weeks leading up to Election Day. Our findings indicate that the political actors put their efforts into spreading information but mostly missed the opportunity offered by this network to trigger mobilization and participation.

Keywords

• social media
• Romania
• political campaigns
• elections