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://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/de/publications/personalization-of-politics-on-facebook-examining-the-content-and-effects-of-professional-emotional-and-private-selfpersonalization(20b38ea9-3a01-4684-93f9-6bee71f42565).html