NEGATIVE CAMPAIGNING ON SOCIAL MEDIA SITES: A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE 2019 AUSTRIAN NATIONAL COUNCIL ELECTION CAMPAIGN

Main Article Content

Stefan Lehrner

Abstract

Election campaigns in the age of social media are rapidly changing their character. Due to the declining party loyalty of voters, once stable constituencies have become increasingly volatile and the importance of campaigning has increased. Parties are now thought to be more likely than in the past to opt for negative campaigning. This paper examines the postings that parties or top candidates made on the social media sites Facebook and Twitter during the 2019 National Council election campaign. The results suggest that - at least on social media sites - the cost-benefit analysis of the parties might turn towards negative campaigning, as the average popularity of negative campaigning posts was higher than those that were not tagged with negative campaigning.  

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Article Details

How to Cite
Lehrner , Stefan. 2021. “NEGATIVE CAMPAIGNING ON SOCIAL MEDIA SITES: A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE 2019 AUSTRIAN NATIONAL COUNCIL ELECTION CAMPAIGN”. Journal of Liberty and International Affairs 7 (1):11-26. https://doi.org/10.47305/JLIA21170011l.
Section
Articles
Author Biography

Stefan Lehrner , Andrássy University Budapest, Hungary

Stefan Lehrner is a PhD Student from the Andrassy University in Budapest. He has a master's degree in political science and a master's degree in communication science. His research focus is on political communication: more precisely, he researches how politicians and parties use social media to communicate with voters.