Between analogue and digital: A critical exploration of strategic social media use in Greek election campaigns

ABSTRACT

Amidst the burgeoning literature on the use social media in electoral politics, there are still relatively few studies that seek to understand developments in digital campaigning from the inside. Drawing on 9 semi-structured interviews with Greek political communication consultants, we address this gap. Theoretically, we draw from Kreiss, Lawrence, & McGregor’ s analytical framework that seeks to account for the ways that campaigns perceive their candidates in relation to audiences, affordances, and genres of different social media platforms, as well as the timing of the electoral cycle, in order to effectively study strategic social media communication. Our findings show that Greek campaigns are embracing many social media but still have a relatively rudimentary understanding of the affordances of different platforms and their communicative cultures. Where campaign communication strategies are shaped by politicians, they typically favor one platform as a channel for all their content. Our findings demonstrate that different media systems and political cultures impact considerably on the adoption of digital communication strategiesand can be quite far from the highly professional and sophisticated American model. Findings are discussed in relation to ongoing debates around campaign professionalization and the role of platforms.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital political campaigns
• social media
• political consultants
• interviews
• political communication
• Greece

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for the guidance and constructive comments. We would also like to thank our interviewees for their participation in this research project.

Notes

1. Recent data on politicians’ social media use demonstrate that the majority of Greek MPs have a Facebook account (85,7%), followed by Twitter (69%) and 26,7% have an Instagram account (aboutpeople, 2018). However, these data cannot tell us if the accounts are active or what kind of activity takes place. Data on social media use in Greece displays Youtube’s popularity with 79%, followed by Facebook (78%), Twitter (24%), and Instagram 33%, (Kalogeropoulos, 2018).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anastasia Veneti

Dr Anastasia Veneti is Principal Academic in the Faculty of Media and Communication at Bournemouth University. Her research focuses on the intersection of media and politics, including (visual) political communication, digital political campaigning, media framing, protests and social movements, and photojournalism. Email: [email protected]

Darren G. Lilleker

Dr Darren G. Lilleker is Professor in Political Communication in the Faculty of Media and Communication, Bournemouth University. His expertise is in public engagement in politics, and he has published widely on the professionalization and marketization of political communication. Email: [email protected]

Daniel Jackson

Dr Daniel Jackson is Associate Professor of Media and Communication at Bournemouth University. His research broadly explores the intersection of media and democracy, including news coverage of politics, the construction of news, political communication, and political talk in online environments. Email: [email protected]