Personalization of politics on Facebook: examining the content and effects of professional, emotional and private self-personalization

Autor(en)

Manon Metz, Sanne Kruikemeier, Sophie Lecheler

Abstrakt

With the integration of social media in political communication repertoires, politicians now permanently campaign for support online. By promoting their personal agenda, politicians increasingly profile themselves independent from their associated parties on the web (i.e., self-personalization). By focusing on self-personalization as a multi-layered concept (i.e., professional, emotional, private self-personalization), this study investigates both the use and consequences of self-personalization on Facebook. A manual content analysis of politicians’ Facebook posts (N = 435) reveals that self-personalization is indeed often used as a communication style on Facebook and is most often present in visual communication. Moreover, the study shows that the use of a more emotional and private style provides a beneficial tool for politicians’ impression management. Publishing emotional and private content yields positive effects on audience engagement, suggesting audiences’ demand for more intimate and emotional impressions of public figures on the web.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft

Externe Organisation(en)

University of Amsterdam (UvA), Universität Mannheim

Journal

Information, Communication and Society

Band

23

Seiten

1481-1498

Anzahl der Seiten

18

ISSN

1369-118X

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2019.1581244

Publikationsdatum

2020

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

508007 Kommunikationswissenschaft, 508014 Publizistik

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Communication, Library and Information Sciences

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/20b38ea9-3a01-4684-93f9-6bee71f42565