Depersonalize and attack: facebook campaigns of populist candidates in Greece during the 2019 Greek national elections

ABSTRACT

Using an actor-center approach, the present study sheds light on the intersection between populist communication and Facebook campaigns in the context of the 2019 general elections in Greece. Specifically, the study focuses on how populist actors in Greece campaigned on Facebook and examines their communicative performance in terms of user engagement in comparison with that of their opponents. For this purpose, a quantitative content analysis was performed by analyzing the Facebook posts published by populist and non-populist candidates over one week preceding the July 7 elections. Results suggest that candidates from populist parties, such as SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) and EL (Greek Solution), were outpaced by the mainstream New Democracy party that won the election. Moreover, significant differences are observed between populist and non-populist actors regarding the communication strategies utilized. Results suggest that different communication strategies have varying effects on user engagement depending on the populist identity of candidates, as well as their position in the left-right political spectrum. Several practical implications are proposed regarding the effective orchestration of Facebook campaigns by populist and non-populist actors.

KEYWORDS:

• Social media campaigns
• general elections
• engagement
• Greece
• candidates
• populist communication

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amalia Triantafillidou

Amalia Triantafillidou is an Assistant Professor in Communication and Public Relations at the Department of Communication and Digital Media of the University of Western Macedonia, Greece. She holds a Ph D in Marketing from Athens University of Economics and Business. Her research interests focus on public relations, e-campaigning, e-government, and crisis communication management. She has published in referred journals such as Computers in Human Behavior, Public Relations Review, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Journal of Consumer Behaviour, International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management, Journal of Hospitality Marketing and Management, etc. Dr Triantafillidou teaches courses related to Public Relations, Corporate Communications, Crisis Communication, Corporate Branding and Consumer Behaviour.

Georgios Lappas

Georgios Lappas, (PhD in Computer Science, MSc in Applied Artificial Intelligence) is a Professor in Information Technology with emphases on Social and Political Informatics. He is the Dean of the “Digital Media and Strategic Communication Lab”, and Vice-Dean of the MSc “Public Discourse and Digital Media”. His main research interests are in the area of Social Informatics, Interactive Media, Digital Marketing, Web Mining, Opinion Mining, E-Government and E-Democracy. He has published more than 100 papers in International Referred Journals, International Referred Conference Proceedings and Book Chapters. He served as PC member in more than 100 international conferences and member of editorial board in journals such as J of Information Technology and Politics, IJ of Entertainment Technology and Management, J of E-Government. He co-chaired 3 international conferences, was member of organizing committee in 7 international conferences, publicity chair in 2 international conferences and session chair in more than 20 international conferences. He coordinated and participated in many national and EU funded projects.