Go viral on the Facebook! Interactions between candidates and followers on Facebook during the Hungarian general election campaign of 2014

Abstract

The study addresses the question of what type of political content can trigger reactions from electoral candidates’ followers on Facebook. Citizens’ reactivity is increasingly important in contemporary political communication. The politicians’ posts can reach the wider public through the citizens’ public reactions. While we have extended knowledge about mass media reactivity, citizens’ political reactivity on social media is highly underexplored. This study is intended to fill this gap by examining what type of political content can trigger reaction from followers on politicians’ Facebook pages. The data contain 7048 Facebook posts by 183 single-member district candidates posted during the Hungarian general election campaign in 2014. The unit of analysis is the individual Facebook post, and the dependent variables are the numbers of likes, comments, and shares. The independent variables are the structural (text, picture, video, etc.) and substantial (content, emotional tone, etc.) characteristics of each post, after controlling for, inter alia, a general follower-activity score on politicians’ Facebook pages. Results showed that citizens are highly reactive to negative emotion-filled, text-using, personal, and activity-demanding posts. Virality is especially facilitated by memes, videos, negative contents and mobilizing posts, and posts containing a call for sharing.

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