Abstract
To extend their reach to supporters and voters, three election campaign functions are key to political actors: information, interaction and mobilisation. We argue that these three functions are interrelated and function most successfully through interrelationship. Thus, the distinction between top-down and bottom-up communication appears to be rather artificial in the context of online campaigns. In campaign practice, both directions are rather closely linked. Our theoretical framework shows how Facebook can be used specifically to realise the three key functions and provides the background for the following chapters for analysing how political parties actually use Facebook in European Parliament (EP) election campaigns. The state of research shows that Facebook has been neglected in previous research on social media use in EP elections.
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Notes
- 1.
For Facebook, the Facebook Ad Library (https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/) provides information on ads, for example, about the range of spending on an ad and its reach across multiple targets.
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Russmann, U., Haßler, J., Fenoll, V., Magin, M. (2021). Social Media as a Campaigning Tool in Elections: Theoretical Considerations and State of Research. In: Haßler, J., Magin, M., Russmann, U., Fenoll, V. (eds) Campaigning on Facebook in the 2019 European Parliament Election. Political Campaigning and Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73851-8_2
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