Party system fragmentation, social cleavages, and social media: New Zealand’s 2017 election campaign on Facebook

ABSTRACT

Explorations of the predictive relationship between party system fragmentation and social cleavages beyond a single dimension remains an undeveloped area of research, one which rarely accounts for the changing technological landscape where parties now compete. This case study of New Zealand's 2017 election campaign on Facebook contributes to this area. It reveals an environment where parties compete within social cleavages for support, and users demonstrate a diverse preference for cleavage appeals. The findings also offer a compromise between the competing theories about New Zealand’ social cleavage structure. Finally, we revisit the predictive relationship between party system size and social cleavages in a postdictive fashion, demonstrating the continued explanatory power of cleavage structure, this time with data derived from social media.

超越单维视角探讨政党体系碎片化与社会裂痕互为因果的关系，还是一个不太发达的研究领域，这与政党角逐、技术翻新的场面并不合拍。本文是对新西兰2017年脸书上选战的个案研究，也算为这个领域添砖加瓦。政党在社会裂痕中竞争选民的支持，脸书的使用者对裂痕的兴趣各有偏重。笔者对有关新西兰社会裂痕结构的不同理论做了调和。本文最后根据社交媒体的资料重新检视了政党体系规模与社会裂痕之间的关系，说明了裂痕结构的持续解释力。

KEYWORDS:

• Party system fragmentation
• social cleavages
• Facebook
• New Zealand

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Justin Bonest Phillips is a Lecturer at the University of Waikato. He specializes in political communication and social media.

V. K. G. Woodman is a Doctoral Candidate at the University of Auckland in Politics and International Relations and specializes in New Zealand politics.

Notes

1 For a summary of the differences between FPP and MMP see Barker and McLeay 2000, 132.

2 Mana and its lone Facebook member, Hone Harawira, proved difficult to track, as the Facebook profile alternated between active and disabled throughout the campaign, so data from this party has been discarded.

3 Electioneering is banned on election day in NZ, so no data was collected on this day.

4 This assumes that the social carrying capacity will continue to be smaller than institutional carrying capacity, which will be tested below.

5 Ties were split randomly, to more equitably distribute the users given the overlap exhibited in the dataset.

6 In a 2010 piece covering the 2008 election, Curtin and Miller note the tenuous grasp on support that the (then five, Green, Act, Māori, JA’s Progressive, UF and NZF) minor parties had. They concluded that ‘[i]f Nagel’s predictions are correct, at least two of the current array of small parties can be expected to disappear in the near future’ (132). As it happens, JA’s progressives were a casualty of the election; Māori and United future in the 2017 election. By 2011, NZ First had regained representation after a period outside of Parliament (2008-2011), but the space for minor parties to succeed has clearly been shrinking over the duration of MMP’s lifetime.