Using Online Platforms for Political Communication in Bahrain Election Campaigns

Abstract

The rise of SNS facilitated politicians with new opportunities to communicate directly with voters. Especially during election campaigns. Twitter provides female politicians with a space to exercise their political tasks beyond traditional media, especially in some Arab countries. Based on the framing theory, this study aims to identify how the female politicians in Bahrain utilised Twitter to present themselves for Parliamentary election campaigns in 2018. The researchers scrutinised the phenomenon using a thematic analysis of n = 263 tweets posted by two Bahraini female candidates. Results revealed that although politicians largely preferred Twitter in election campaigns to reinforce support and mobilisation for political engagement, two selected candidates lacked interaction with their supporters. Thus, the researchers concluded that the Bahraini female politicians have a long way to represent themselves in digital media politics as men widely benefit from personalisation more than females.

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