Off the charts: user engagement enhancers in election infographics

ABSTRACT

In recent years, political discourse in digital spheres has seen a rise in the use of infographics. The paper addresses an unexplored question about this phenomenon: which characteristics are associated with higher levels of ostensive user engagement with political infographics in social media? We conceptualize ostensive user engagement as the outward-facing metrics afforded by a platform (e.g., like, share, and comment count) that serve both as means for self-presentation and shape the informational environment that others are exposed to. A corpus comprised of all infographics posted on Facebook by the four leading candidates in the 2016 US presidential campaign (N = 252) was coded for cognitive, behavioral, and emotional characteristics. We found that two of the cognitively oriented dimensions enhanced engagement, while behavioral cues (calls to action) were, surprisingly, negatively linked. The inclusion of emotions did not show an overall association; however, a deeper look revealed a candidate-specific effect: anger was associated with greater engagement on Trump's infographics, and similarly, pleasure on Sanders’. In conclusion, we discuss the implications of our findings for understanding the informational environment shaped by engagement with infographics in light of the two seemingly opposing perceptions of internal and external authenticity.

KEYWORDS:

• Data visualization
• user engagement
• election campaigns
• infographics
• authenticity
• social media

Acknowledgement

We wish to thank Meital Balmas, Paul Frosh, Blake Hallinan, Caitlin Reynolds and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful and valuable comments on this paper.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Smart Family Institute of Communications at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Notes on contributors

Eedan R. Amit-Danhi

Eedan R. Amit-Danhi is a PhD candidate at the Department of Communication and Journalism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her main research interests are digital political infographics, data visualization, virality, and visual political rhetoric.

Limor Shifman

Limor Shifman is a professor at the Department of Communication and Journalism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her main research interests are new media, popular culture, values in digital spheres and the social construction of humor.