Obama’s 2012 Facebook Campaign: PoliticalCommunication in the Age of the Like Button
Roman GerodimosJákup Justinussen
ABSTRACT. This article examines the role of social media in contemporary political communica-tion, focusing on Barack Obama’s Facebook campaign in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election.Although there is a growing body of literature on online forms of participation, little research exists onthe role of social buttons on Facebook (like, comment, and share) as tools of political voice. We usethese native interactive features as indicators of how citizens engage with particular political messages.A content analysis of posts published on Obama’s official Facebook page over the two months leadingup to Election Day was conducted, along with a detailed measurement of all user interactions for eachpost. Our analysis indicates that the Obama campaign used Facebook as a tool of top-down promotion,focusing on Obama’s personality and as a means of strategically guiding followers to act, rather than asa means of bottom-up empowerment or hybridized coproduction. However, we also found that follow-ers engaged selectively with campaign messages and often interacted more with policy-oriented poststhan with promotional ones.
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KEYWORDS. Barack Obama, campaign, emotions, Facebook, personalization, political communi-cation, presidential election, rhetoric, social media
The 2008 U.S. presidential election markeda significant shift in political campaigning, with20the Obama campaign making unprecedented useof social media (Cogburn & Espinoza-Vasquez,2011; Lilleker & Jackson, 2011). Three years
Roman Gerodimos, PhD, is Principal Lecturer in Global Current Affairs in the Media School atBournemouth University. His research focuses on the role of digital media in fostering urban coexistenceand global citizenship. He is the winner of the 2010 Arthur McDougall Prize for his research on online youthcivic engagement. He is the co-editor of The Media, Political Participation and Empowerment (Routledge,2013) and The Politics of Extreme Austerity: Greece in the Eurozone Crisis (Palgrave, 2015) and has publishedin journals such as Political Studies, Public Administration, and Information, Communication & Society. Heis founder and convenor of the Greek Politics Specialist Group (GPSG) and a faculty member at the SalzburgAcademy on Media & Global Change.
Jákup Justinussen is a digital marketing and communications consultant in the Faroe Islands and recentlygraduated with an MSc in Digital Marketing from the University of Southampton. He holds a BA (Hons) inCommunication & Media from Bournemouth University, where he won the 2013 Carol Burns prize.
Address correspondence to: Roman Gerodimos, The Media School, Bournemouth University, TalbotCampus, Fern Barrow, Poole BH12 5BB, UK (E-mail: [email protected]).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/witp
later, President Barack Obama broke with con-vention once again when he publicly announced 25his reelection bid with a YouTube video and atweet on April 4th, 2011. The emphasis on dif-ferent types of social media during the campaign
reflects their increasing presence in people’sdaily lives and their potential role in facili-30tating more direct and interactive communica-tion between politicians and citizens. Citizensincreasingly access social media for politicalnews and to share their opinion (Rainie & Smith,2012; Sweetser & Lariscy, 2008). To what35extent, though, does this intensive activity acrossdigital platforms constitute a paradigm shift interms of civic engagement with political dis-course?
An increasingly rich body of literature has40been looking at online political campaigns inorder to establish whether politicians are uti-lizing the Internet’s potential to empower citi-zens and reduce the democratic deficit. Despiteextensive claims about a shift to a new paradigm45of civic empowerment, existing research has yetto confirm these hopes: Larsson (2013) foundthat, overall, citizens prefer to stay consumers,and political actors opt for a rather conservativeuse of the Web. The extent to which increas-50ing levels of access, interaction, and civic liter-acy can create an “architecture of participation”(Jackson & Lilleker, 2009, p. 232) that will forcepoliticians to engage in more meaningful waysremains to be seen.55
This paper looks at Barack Obama’s cam-paign for the 2012 presidential election, focus-ing on its presence and content on Facebook,as well as the response of followers to particu-lar types of rhetorical strategy and post content.60The premise of our study is that users selec-tively interact with some posts and not withothers through Facebook’s native features (likes,comments, and shares), and that some messagescapture their interest while others are deemed65not interesting enough to engage with. For thatpurpose, we analyzed the Obama campaign’scommunication content on his official Facebookpage (www.facebook.com/BarackObama) in therun-up to the 2012 election, and how users70engaged with those messages. In addition to pro-viding us with a glimpse into the president’sbroader reelection campaign strategy, this questcan also inform our understanding of politi-cal communication through social media and75the extent to which this constitutes a funda-mentally more interactive paradigm of civicengagement.
Despite the proliferation of studies on onlinepolitical communication, there is little empiri- 80cal work on engagement through social media(Carlisle & Patton, 2013). Existing studies focuseither on the strategy of particular campaignsor on the effects of Internet/social media useon social capital and political participation 85in general. Many of these studies are skep-tical about the existence of any particularlypositive or paradigm-shifting effects, althoughVaccari (2010) argues that we may be wit-nessing the emergence of a hybridized model 90of top-down strategic control and bottom-upcivic empowerment during political campaigns.This study brings together these two concep-tual strands to examine the content of Obama’s2012 Facebook campaign and compare it to 95users’ engagement with particular types of mes-sages. There are now several published studieson Obama’s 2008 campaign, whose findings andquestions regarding innovation, interactivity (orlack of), empowerment (or lack), and differ- 100ent forms of strategic control (e.g., Baldwin-Philippi, 2012) can be used as a benchmarkagainst which to evaluate the 2012 campaign.
THE DIGITIZATION OF “THEPERMANENT CAMPAIGN” AND THE 105
OBAMA PHENOMENON
The gradual professionalization of politicalcommunication over the last several decades(Negrine & Lilleker, 2002) was a precursor to arapid and radical shift to a much more intense, 110strategic, and personalized level of campaign-ing via new media that has taken place in thelast decade. The digitization of the “permanentcampaign” has allowed political parties to reachout to both loyal and swing voters through- 115out the electoral cycle, renewing early hopesregarding the potential of the Web to facili-tate dialogic communication—and thus a moresubstantive relationship—between elected rep-resentatives and citizens (Kent & Taylor, 1998). 120
Campaign Web sites were originally used toprovide information and mobilize constituents.Howard Dean was the first to give the Interneta prominent role in his campaign in the run-up to the 2004 presidential election (Compton, 125
Gerodimos and Justinussen 3
2008), but critics have posited that his blog wasmerely a facade of interactivity because he madeinteractive tools available, but ignored com-ments from supporters on his blog (Sweetser& Lariscy, 2008). Online campaigning was still130at an early stage, with Web sites being treatedas “static campaign flyers” (Endres & Warnick,2004, p. 323) and used merely for disseminatinginformation rather than building dialogue.
The extent to which the use of social media,135e-mail campaigns, and widespread grassrootsmobilization since 2004 and in particular since2008 signify a return to a paradigm of moremeaningful direct communication between can-didates and voters is still debated. Yet, it is clear140that the Internet has had an undeniable impacton the ways and means through which the pub-lic engages with politics. In a postmortem aboutthe 2008 election, Daou (cited in Metzgar andMaruggi, 2009) wrote that “never before have145so many people conversed publicly and neverbefore has the global discourse been so accessi-ble, recursive and durable” (p. 161). As Pearsonand O’Connell (2012) note, “[i]n 2009, Twitterwas a novelty in politics. In 2012, it’s a neces-150sity.” This echoes the fact that nearly twiceas many people used social networking sites(SNSs) in 2011 compared to 2008 (Hampton,Goulet, Rainie, & Purcell, 2011), with Twitterusers increasing from 3 million to 500 mil-155lion (Semiocast, 2012), and Facebook exceeding1 billion users in 2012 (Facebook, 2013).
Much research has been carried out onthe unprecedented use of social media in the2008 U.S. election, making Obama’s cam-160paign a seminal case study of social mediause in politics (Cogburn & Espinoza-Vasquez,2011; Sweetser & Lariscy, 2008; Vaccari 2010;Woolley, Limperos, & Oliver, 2010). At somepoint, the 2008 Obama campaign employed up165to 100 staff members to work on his socialmedia presence (Hong & Nadler, 2012). In the2012 election, the prevalence of social mediaincreased even further (see Table 1). Donatingwas made significantly easier when the Quick170Donate function was implemented, wherein adonor’s payment information could be stored sothat next time they were prompted to donatethrough an e-mail, text message, or on socialmedia, they could do so with a single click. The175
TABLE 1. Barack Obama’s OnlineCampaigning in 2012 Compared to 2008
2008 2012
Facebook fans 2.4 million 32 millionDigital
fund-raising$533m∗ $690m
Donationsunder $200
45% of totaldonations
67% of totaldonations
∗In 2012 prices
Obama campaign utilized Twitter’s Q&A ses-sions feature (http://askobama.twitter.com) andcreated an “Ask Me Anything” thread on Reddit(Reddit, 2012).
Although the literature on the use of social 180media during the 2012 election campaign isonly now emerging, several questions and con-cerns are being posed that are consistent withpoints raised by previous studies in the UnitedStates and Europe. Based on a series of in-depth 185interviews with 2012 campaign consultants andstrategists, Serazio’s (2014) study shows “howcampaign operatives labor to manage politicaldiscourse and news agenda(s) in ways antithet-ical to [the ideals of the Habermasian public 190sphere], given the opportunities and challengesthat new media technologies afford” (p. 759); inan effort to attract swing voters who tend to tuneout partisan messages, the president of a polit-ical advertising agency interviewed by Serazio 195admits that “you have to figure out a way ofreally disassociating yourself from politics to tryto get their attention in the first place” (p. 751).Shifting away from political debates appearsto help not only attract people’s attention but 200also control the message. Following a compar-ison of Barack Obama’s and Mitt Romney’sFacebook output in the run-up to the 2012 elec-tion, Bronstein (2013) concludes that “the mainadvantage of fandom politics over traditional 205politics is that it discourages dissent and encour-ages affective allegiances, i.e., it is easier forthe candidate to maintain the support of theiraudience if they like him or her” (p. 185).
Other recent studies on Obama’s use of dig- 210ital media in 2008 and during his presidencyproduced mixed results regarding the paradigm-shifting nature of his communications output.
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In a review of election campaigning across fourliberal democracies, Lilleker and Jackson (2011)215found that in all cases (including Obama’s orig-inal campaign), candidates’ Web sites “weregeared towards furthering the campaign and notenhancing public engagement with the demo-cratic process” (p. 190), although they also note220that the only example of bottom-up communi-cation was observed on Barack Obama’s blog.Similarly, Katz, Barris, and Jain (2013) foundthat despite “the impression of responsiveness”(p. 108), the White House has only created dia-225logical opportunities that do not require morethan a nominal reaction.
However, we still need to establish the preciserhetorical tools utilized by the Obama campaignto better understand the extent to which that230discourse was close-ended and strategic or invit-ing of further engagement. Kienpointner (2013)argues that Obama has successfully managedto incorporate rational argumentation into hispolitical rhetoric and, by strategically “maneu-235vering,” to overcome the polarization of partisandiscourse, that is, combining the normative idealof rational deliberation with efficient persuasion.We thus apply the classic Aristotelian model ofrhetorical strategy (logos, ethos, pathos), which240has proven to still be a valuable tool for theunderstanding of political action in contempo-rary settings (Martin, 2013).
Past political campaigns have used a vari-ety of rhetorical tools such as informing,245building relationships with the voter, personalappeal (directly addressing the audience or usingthe imperative mood), building a candidate’simage, calls to action, denigrating an opponent,and defending against an opponent’s attacks250(Sweetser & Lariscy, 2008; Trammell, Williams,Postelnicu, & Landreville, 2006). It has alsobeen shown that emotional appeals can be par-ticularly impactful on how citizens respond topolitical messages (Brader, 2005). It is well255known that in 2008, Obama put strong empha-sis on hope and looking forward. Indeed, manystudies have looked at the rhetoric and languageof political candidates, but research is only justbeginning to look into the nature of interac-260tive features on social media (e.g., Bronstein,2013; Gerlitz & Helmond, 2013; John, 2013),and there are no known studies examining these
in comparison to the rhetoric and content usedin Facebook posts, including photographs. 265
EMERGING PATTERNS OF ONLINECIVIC ENGAGEMENT
The question of whether digital campaignsutilize the medium’s capacity for democraticdialogue and even coproduction of policy 270(Jackson & Lilleker, 2009), or whether theystick to one-way communication with fewparticipatory features, is part of a broaderdebate between proponents of the theory ofinnovation—the view that social media provide 275us with space for positive, fact-checked, anddecentralized debate, effectively signaling a newparadigm of civic engagement, and those whosupport the theory of normalization—the viewthat online campaigns and civic attitudes merely 280replicate offline traits and phenomena, such asstrategic control, candidate focus, and negativecampaigning (Larsson, 2013). The role and atti-tudes of citizens—and how their civic activitiescan be facilitated or hampered by the medium’s 285own filters—are also crucial factors.
It has been argued that social media empowervoters, and in particular give young people atool to express their civic voices. A study byWells and Dudash (2007) showed that two of the 290most popular sources for political informationamong young voters are talking to others andthe Internet. In fact, 27% of 18- to 29-year-oldseven say that SNSs make more of an impact thanin-person advocacy in political campaigning 295(Harvard University Institute of Politics, 2011).The same survey also shows that young voterslooked first to national newspapers for politi-cal news on the 2012 election campaign, then towhat friends shared on Facebook, followed by 300official Facebook campaign pages. Other stud-ies expand this to all ages, revealing that voters’political attitudes and behavior are influencedby everyday conversations with family mem-bers or complete strangers (Himelboim, Lariscy, 305Tinkham, & Sweetser, 2012; Lilleker, 2006).Some have expressed concerns about the factthat the Internet seems to favor homophily andselective exposure, bringing like-minded peopletogether and functioning only to reinforce their 310
Gerodimos and Justinussen 5
preexisting beliefs, a phenomenon accentuatedby sophisticated algorithms that are particularlyinstrumental across social media, creating a “fil-ter bubble” that restricts the range of perspec-tives encountered by citizens online (Pariser,3152011).
Interestingly, recent studies (e.g., Vaccari,2013) show that online political campaigns havealso become more efficient at improving recep-tion and acceptance of political messages. This320is effectively done when individuals see infor-mation diffused through low-threshold activi-ties by supporters, for example, seeing con-tent shared by peers. Also, reinforcement seemsless relevant when considering undecided vot-325ers, because they are yet to be persuaded. Theyseek emotional and economic stimuli and cuesfrom the campaign (Lilleker, 2006). However,research has yet to look at how users engagewith specific political messages on SNSs and330what type of content is deemed more worthy ofsharing.
Digital tools themselves can be used to cre-ate or contribute to a public conversation amongvoters, and even though such actions do not335necessarily qualify as political conversations,the increasing newsworthiness of viral posts(such as the photo of Barack and MichelleObama hugging at a campaign rally, which wasposted after the 2012 election was called and340became the most tweeted photo to date) is areminder that user responses to social mediacontent have become a distinct cultural phe-nomenon in their own right. On Facebook, userscan express affirmation of content with a like,345voice their opinion with a comment, or sharecontent with their own network. These met-rics can be studied to understand what type ofpolitical content engages people, among otherpotential implications (e.g., impact on public350policy and institutional legitimacy) and poten-tial knock-on effects (e.g., benefits for politicalawareness and spillover to active, offline par-ticipation), which fall outside the scope of thepresent paper. Facebook’s interface, including355the architecture of the News Feed (text andimage posts are structurally equal, in contrast toother social media platforms) and the usabilityof the platform’s native features (commenting iseasily completed by typing and pressing enter,360
while liking and sharing only require a singleclick), makes it a particularly interesting casefrom a political communication perspective.
The conversation on Facebook is partly facili-tated by posting content, and partly by engaging 365with existing content through the use of socialbuttons. These facilitate cross-syndication andquick dissemination of Web content (Gerlitz &Helmond, 2013). The like button was originallyintroduced to “replace short affective statements 370like ‘Awesome’ and ‘Congrats!’” (Gerlitz &Helmond, 2013, p. 5). Little research existson the motivation behind why people like onFacebook, but the intuitive assumption is thatthe number of likes implies exposure, atten- 375tion, and some sort of affirmation, ratification,or endorsement of what is posted. Essentially,a post with many interactions has evidentlygrabbed more attention and spread more widely,whereas a post with fewer interactions has not 380been deemed worthy or interesting to engagewith. Sharing on social media is an active prac-tice of communication and distribution. It is notsharing in the traditional sense where you givesomething, so that you consequently have less. 385It is a nonsacrificial act of participation, benefit-ing from the positive connotations of the tradi-tional concept of sharing (John, 2013). Hence, itis a less costly and lower-level form of participa-tion, but still signifies dissemination, exposure, 390and citizen dialogue.
Having noted that, SNSs are merely a plat-form facilitating communication to and betweenvoters. Pearson and O’Connell (2012) argue thatit is not the number of followers that determines 395one’s influence on Twitter; it is how one usesthose 140 letters. Metzgar and Maruggi (2009)contend that social media is just a tool and can-not replace “message, motivation, or strategy”(p. 141). Similarly, Vaccari (2010) reiterates the 400role of contextual factors, arguing that technol-ogy is merely the driver of preexisting motiva-tions. Hence, the medium-specific aspects of aparticular campaign—such as Facebook’s nativefeatures—ought to be examined in conjunction 405with fundamental social, cultural, political, andpsychological aspects of political communica-tion and engagement.
It could be argued that the emergence of civicconsumerism—which this type of user-oriented 410
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selective online engagement is part of—poseschallenges for democratic engagement and tra-ditional notions of civic duty, because citizensand especially young people demand to seethe relevance of issues to their own every-415day lives (Gerodimos, 2008, 2012). Facebookfounder Mark Zuckerberg’s modus operandi,that is, that “[a] squirrel dying in front of yourhouse may be more relevant to your inter-ests right now than people dying in Africa”420(Kirkpatrick, 2010, p. 296) raises further ques-tions about the role of empathy and values incontemporary civic engagement through socialmedia.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND DESIGN425
This study seeks to examine how peoplerespond to specific political messages onlineusing social buttons as metrics of civic engage-ment. Based on this context, our two startingassumptions are that (a) Facebook interactions430such as liking, commenting and sharing arepart of the everyday conversation that repre-sents and shapes individuals’ political attitudes;and (b) the number of interactions on Facebookposts more or less reflects what captures fol-435lowers’ attention, at least at a basic quantitativelevel. Focusing on the 2012 Obama campaign onFacebook, the aim of the study is to analyze thecontent of campaign posts and the response offollowers and, more broadly, to examine what440these patterns of interaction tell us about thedepth and interactivity of online political com-munication and the potential for meaningfulcivic engagement.
In particular we pose the following research445questions:
RQ1. Content/Strategy: What were themain types of posts, themes, andrhetorical tools used by the Obamacampaign on Facebook, and did450these constitute a top-down strate-gic communications output or anattempt to foster two-way engage-ment with voters?
RQ2. Reception/Engagement: Which of 455the frames, policy areas, and rhetori-cal devices used were most success-ful in terms of Facebook followerengagement (measured through thenumber of likes, comments, and 460shares)?
For the purposes of this study we conducted acontent analysis of all 166 posts1 published onthe Obama campaign’s official Facebook pageover 67 days, leading up to Election Day, that is, 465from September 1 to November 6, 2012. Threeof these posts were photo albums and were notincluded in the final coding (N = 163) as theywere classified as folders (groups of many pic-tures). Every post was recorded onto a spread- 470sheet, with text, picture, video, and hyperlink asappropriate, and, along with these, the numberof interactions (see Figure 1). The coding pro-cess involved looking at the impact of content(themes and rhetoric), structure (graphics, text 475length), and strategy (frequency of posts, tem-poral context, which day of the week posts werepublished) on the number of likes, comments,and shares that each post received. A highernumber of interactions was assumed to indi- 480cate a higher level of engagement with the postcontent by Facebook users.
The codes used were a mixture of selectcodes from past literature along with codesdeduced from the content and rhetoric of 485the posts. For example, Benoit’s functionalapproach, which examines the division betweenacclaims, attacks, and defense strategies (Benoit& Benoit, 2005) was employed to comparesentiment with past campaign communication 490strategies. Additionally, the coding scheme fea-tured six categories deduced from the samples:post structure, Aristotelian rhetoric, rhetoricaldevices, policy themes, picture content, and callto action. These were further divided into 46 dif- 495ferent codes, which were interpreted in dichoto-mous categories, sorted by present (1) or absent(0) for each post (Trammell et al., 2006). (Forintercoder reliability see Table 2.) The data wasreviewed twice to refine the discovered codes 500
Gerodimos and Justinussen 7
FIGURE 1. Sample post from Barack Obama’s official Facebook page.
TABLE 2. Coding Categories for Content Analysis and Intercoder Reliability
∗On a random 10% of the sample, two coders, blind coding
and categories (Saldaña, 2009). Because pic-tures are very prominent in Facebook posts,often being the main carrier of a message orcomplementing the written text, the coding pro-cess looked at the picture and text in a post505
combined. However, this merely involved look-ing at the textual content and explicit elementsin a picture (Table 2), and did not interpret con-notations or associations that a picture mightevoke in a reader. Video and link content was 510
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not analyzed, because this is not immediatelyvisible to the user browsing the posts on theObama campaign’s Facebook page. These ele-ments require a level of active (albeit minimal)effort from the user—opening the link or press-515ing the play button—who only then is exposedto the message contained therein.
For the data analysis we initially used Mann-Whitney’s U to compare the means of likes,comments, and shares across all the dichoto-520mous coding categories. We then run multi-ple regression tests, treating the various postcontent/structure features as independent vari-ables and likes (R2 = .636), comments (R2 =.466), and shares (R2 = .461) as the dependent525variable. Based on those findings we then run ananalysis of covariance (ANCOVA) test to fur-ther cross-check the impact of various factorson likes, comments, and shares, while control-ling for certain variables that appeared to have a530significant effect.
FINDINGS
Our analysis indicates that, overall, theObama campaign treated Facebook as a toolof top-down promotion, as opposed to a means535of substantive civic interaction. Furthermore,while messages were highly personalized, bothin terms of focusing on Obama’s personality anddirectly addressing the user, they focused more
on the symbolic and affective aspects of political 540communication than on political argumentationand issue-oriented campaigning. However, inter-estingly, campaign followers were quite selec-tive about which messages they engaged with,often rejecting certain types of posts (if we 545accept the study’s premise that not interactingwith a post can be considered an indication ofrejection or selective engagement on the partof Facebook users). Before presenting the sub-stantive findings in more detail, we first outline 550the frequency, volume, and intensity of cam-paign messages and user interactions across thetwo-month period.
Campaign and User Interaction Overview
Although the number of page likes (i.e., the 555total number of users who effectively subscribedto Barack Obama’s Facebook page) increasedfrom 28 million in early September of 2008 to31.8 million in early November (see Figure 2)—meaning that an increased number of users were 560exposed to the president’s messages in theirFacebook News Feed—the number of post inter-actions remained mainly steady with a slowlyincreasing trend line and large fluctuations.Consistency in the social media communica- 565tion strategy was apparent in that two to threeposts were published on most days, with an aver-age length of 19.8 words each (see Figure 3).Limiting Facebook communications to such a
FIGURE 2. Time line—Total likes of Obama’s official Facebook page.
Source: InsideFacebook.com 2012
Gerodimos and Justinussen 9
FIGURE 3. Number of Facebook posts published daily by the Obama campaign (September 1st toNovember 6th, 2012).
small core of posts per day maintains a stable570amount of output in order to avoid the contrastbetween busy and slow news days (or betweenperiods of aggressive or positive and cautious ordefensive campaigning); additionally, it ensuresthat followers’ attention is not diluted, given575especially the mechanics of Facebook’s per-sonalization algorithm, which prioritizes andmanipulates the visibility of posts on a user’sNews Feed (Pariser, 2011).
The stable and relatively small number of580posts comes into stark contrast with the highlyvolatile and energetic user interaction with thoseposts (see Figure 4). Beyond the weekly flowof likes (peaking on Wednesdays and dippingon Saturdays), comments (dipping on Sundays),585and shares (dipping on Fridays to Sundays),the occasional peaks in interactions highlightkey events, such as the debates, the Obamas’20th anniversary, and Election Day. Although itis obvious that this graph only captures events590mentioned by the campaign itself, it still givesus an interesting overview of how followersinteracted with these events. For example, theday after the third debate (October 23, 2012), apost stated, “Share this if you agree: President595Obama won the final debate . . .” and thenumber of interactions peaked for likes, com-ments, and shares. Furthermore, the comparative
overlay of all likes, shares, and comments acrossthe 67 days of analysis in Figure 4 shows that 600people interact differently with different posts.For example, some posts peak in comments butnot in likes and shares.
Although a like is the easiest way to engage(it only requires a click), and therefore receives 605significantly more interactions than commentsor shares, the variation across dates and eventssuggests that the three interactive features aredifferent not only in terms of effort. As demon-strated below, they also signify different mean- 610ings and constitute different ways of engagingwith a given message. This may be more appli-cable to younger voters in particular, who aremore likely to perceive online interactions asa viable form of political participation: a like 615is arguably a way of affirming or ratifying thatwhich is said; a comment allows for voicingone’s opinion, and a share is about sharinginformation with one’s own connections. Thechanged perception of political participation is 620also evident in that, according to some studies,young social media users are not as interested inmore costly activities such as fund-raising, butrather in debating and establishing relationshipswith the candidate and fellow supporters, which 625can be confined to mere interactions on a socialmedia platform (Sweetser & Lariscy, 2008).
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FIGURE 4. Overlay of likes, comments, and shares per post (September 1st to November 6th,2012).
Campaign Content and Strategy:Facebook as a Tool of Top-Down630
Personalized Promotion
The overwhelming majority of the messagesposted by the campaign in the 67 days beforethe 2012 election were picture posts, that is,they featured a single photo, usually along635with an accompanying caption, text, or com-mentary (see Table 3). This aligns well withFacebook’s ethos about sharing visual con-tent, because the platform recently announceda design change to make picture content more640prominent (Forbes, 2013). More than half of the
TABLE 3. User Interaction with Different PostFormats
All posts(N = 163) Picture Video Text-only Hyperlink
n 154 7 2 125% 94.5 4.3 1.2 76.7Likes
(Mean)195,252 38,468 126,065 174,146
Comments(Mean)
12,782 3,826 6,169 12,509
Shares(Mean)
21,842 4,856 4,835 17,753
photo posts featured Barack Obama himself—actively speaking, hugging supporters, on thephone, or with an affective appeal where he iswith his family or with a clear expression of 645readiness to take on a second term—while afurther 13% featured his wife and/or daugh-ters alone (see Table 4). Very few videos areposted and the vast majority of hyperlinks linkto the campaign Web site (www.barackobama. 650com) or other campaign sites, with only a fewlinking to the following external sources: WhiteHouse Blog, Beyoncé Web site (endorsement),
Red Cross donations (Hurricane Sandy), andThe Daily Show (interview with Obama).655
Moving on to the content of the text accom-panying the images, we found that Obama’s2012 Facebook campaign was mostly posi-tive and avoided highly polarizing or negativeattacks. Using Benoit’s functional approach in660the coding process allowed us to draw com-parisons to previous studies using the sametheoretical framework (Benoit & Benoit, 2005;Compton, 2008; Sweetser & Lariscy, 2008;Trammell et al., 2006). No defensive responses665were made to Romney’s attacks (although the“Obama Truth Team” Facebook page was moreconcerned with deflecting attacks and counter-maneuvers), which is somewhat different fromprevious campaigns, although, even in the past,670defensive responses were only used on a smallscale (Compton, 2008).
Nearly half of the posts (N = 163) on theofficial Obama Facebook page were acclaimsfollowed by a considerably smaller number of675opponent attacks (Table 4). Compared to the2008 social media campaign, where the dividebetween character- and policy-focused acclaimswas about 55%/45%, respectively (Compton,2008), stronger emphasis was placed on charac-680ter acclaims in the 2012 election and less on pol-icy (62%/38%). Furthermore, while 78.8% ofpolicy statements in the 2004 Bush versus Kerrycampaign were attacks against the opponent,only 52% were attacks against character and685policy in this campaign. Sixty-four percent ofpolicy statements included acclaims of Obama’sown character and policies, suggesting a morepositive tone. This is consistent with previousstudies of both the 2008 (Lilleker & Jackson,6902011) and the 2012 (Bronstein, 2013) cam-paigns, which found that the Obama team optedfor a broadcast message of hope and enthu-siasm, while only using negative campaign-ing through “under the radar” microtargeting695(Serazio, 2014, p. 745).
In terms of the rhetorical tools employed, thecase for Obama is mostly built on emotions(pathos) and credibility (ethos) and less so onrational arguments (logos). In fact three-quarters700of character acclaims use emotionally chargedphrases such as “Obama has revealed himself tobe a man who cares about all Americans,” “. . .
a president who stands up for all Americans . . .
,” and “President Obama’s leadership has made 705America stronger, safer, and more secure . . .” Akey vehicle for the framing of Obama’s credibil-ity was quotes: nearly one-third of all posts usedquotes to make a point and the great majorityof them contained some form of emotive lan- 710guage and credibility appeal. Only one-quarterof posts contained policy statements, which isvery similar to the proportion of policy messagesfeaturing in blogs during the 2004 campaign(Trammell et al., 2006). 715
Given the highly personalized nature of theAmerican political system, it is not unusualfor a presidential campaign to focus on theperson of the individual candidate as opposedto more political, institutional, or processual 720aspects of the campaign. Even so, our anal-ysis shows that Obama’s reelection campaignon Facebook focused predominantly on his per-sonality and family, rather than on his policies,ideas, track record, or opponent, which is some- 725what surprising for a sitting president whose firstterm featured historic executive, legislative, andjudicial debates and decisions.
Crucially, policy posts were not framed asopportunities for substantive debate or engage- 730ment, that is, “conversation starters”; they wereused as hooks for a call to action, such as sharing(50%), showing support (7%), voting (7%), andfinding out more (2.4%). This finding reflectsmore broadly the entire discourse of the cam- 735paign, which was close-ended, promotional, andhighly guarded or controlled. For example, outof 163 posts, only nine contained any type ofquestion, perhaps a somewhat crude but stillimportant indicator of whether the discourse 740figuratively or literally attempts to engage theaudience in a substantive discussion. Even moretellingly, out of those nine questions only onecould be characterized as potentially substan-tive, but even that was tied to a call for action 745(“Why are you voting for President Obama?Leave your No. 1 reason in the comments andtag a friend to let them know”). All otherquestions were fully procedural or promotional(“Got a phone? Got Internet? GET HIS BACK. 750Call.barackobama.com”; “Voting by mail? Puta stamp on that ballot and send it in today”;“Would you describe yourself as a ‘talker’?
12 JOURNAL OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & POLITICS
TABLE 5. User Interaction with Different Typesof Rhetorical Device
All posts(N = 163) n %
Meanlikes
per post
Meancommentsper post
Meanshares
per post
Call to action 113 69.3 179,970 12,224 21,867Personal
Hit the phones for the president if you’ve gotBarack’s back”).755
Calls for action and personal appeal (i.e., theuse of imperative mood in the sentence structuretoward the reader, prompting some sort of actionin response to the post) were the two most-usedrhetorical devices (see Table 5). Interestingly, on760Howard Dean’s blog during the 2004 primariescampaign, only one-quarter of posts focused onmaking the reader feel part of the campaign(Trammell et al., 2006), while 71.8% of postsin Obama’s 2012 campaign used personal or765collective appeal. This could be attributed toa number of factors, such as the much moredirect and personal mode of communication onFacebook, the increasing importance of person-alization in contemporary political culture, and770the fact that the Obama campaign has strategi-cally and consistently utilized social media tomobilize public support and facilitate a sense ofbelonging (Katz et al., 2013; Lilleker & Jackson,2011).775
The prominence of mobilization is evident inthe campaign’s Facebook strategy, with 69.3%of posts prompting engagement in a wide rangeof subcategories recognized (see Table 6). Seventypes of call to action were recognized, with780“prompting to share” being mostly used. Theimplied message in most posts was to use thenative share function on Facebook to spreadthe message and make Obama’s campaign more
TABLE 6. User Interaction with Different Typesof Call to Action
Call to actionposts (n = 113) n %
Meanlikes
per post
Meancommentsper post
Meanshares
per post
Call to share 41 36.3 221,204 14,557 36,450Show support 22 19.5 172,682 10,789 12,987Vote 18 15.9 214,071 13,549 21,444Find out more 15 13.3 133,789 12,420 13,235Donate 15 13.3 125,883 11,113 11,124Buy/special
offer5 4.4 72,241 4,677 4,000
Joincompetition
4 3.5 67,807 6,401 4,645
visible on the social media platform. Donations 785are only mentioned in 9.2% of posts overall,compared to Howard Dean’s blog campaignin 2003 and 2004, which encouraged dona-tions in 15.7% of posts (Trammell et al., 2006).However, Obama’s campaign encouraged indi- 790vidual involvement (show support, share) in38.7% of overall posts compared to Dean’s12.5% (Trammell et al., 2006), illustrating amore intensive usage of social media to mobi-lize grass roots and disseminate information 795(Sweetser & Lariscy, 2008), but also a strategythat is much more professional and segmentedin order to match the particular traits and usertrends of each platform.
Finally, the language employed across posts 800largely constitutes a very personal and directcommunication approach. As indicated earlier,much focus is placed on President Obama him-self, as well as employing personal appealsthat attempt to close the discursive and politi- 805cal gap between the reader and the candidate.Words such as you, your, you’ve, you’re, andyours occur 136 times throughout the 163 posts.Additionally, the words we, we’ve, us, andour occur 67 times, and the word friend or 810friends occurred 19 times in the context ofphrases such as “let your friends know” or “yourfriends should see this.” Facebook’s core pur-pose of connecting people was appropriated bythe Obama campaign as it sought to emulate the 815interpersonal connectivity that is native to theplatform.
Gerodimos and Justinussen 13
User Response and Engagement:Rewarding Positivity; ResistingPromotions820
As mentioned earlier, the great majority of theObama campaign’s Facebook posts in the run-up to the election featured images. We foundthat the presence of Obama in a photo post hada statistically significant positive effect on the825number of likes (r = .373, p < .001), comments(r = .363, p < .001), and shares (r = .265, p =.002) it received. The presence of the First LadyMichelle Obama or of Obama’s daughters in aphoto had an even more engaging effect: such830posts received on average 70%–80% more likesthan the other most popular type of post cate-gory, that is, photos featuring the president onhis own.
Our analysis of campaign followers’ reac-835tions to its Facebook posts produced a surprisingdichotomy: substantive posts (about policy oreven about Obama’s character) were far moreengaging and successful in getting people toshare them than personal appeals and promo-840tional calls. One major exception to that wasCalls to Share: such prompts had a statisticallysignificant effect on likes (r = .199, p = .015) aswell as on actual shares (r = .309, p < .001;the average number of shares for posts when845prompted to do so was 36,450, while for allother posts the average was 15,508 shares) andeven more so when that prompt was embeddedin a photo (r = .444, p < .001), regardless ofwhether the president appeared in the photo or850not.
It is worth pointing out that one of the twotext-only posts received significantly higher lev-els of attention (230,000 likes, 7,126 comments,and 9,006 shares) than the other:855
President Obama: “We don’t turn back.We leave no one behind. We pulleach other up.” If this sounds like theAmerica you believe in, keep us mov-ing forward: http://OFA.BO/FzuNUH—860September 7, 2012
In contrast, the other post received only22,469 likes, 5,212 comments, and 664shares:
Last call: Enter before midnight for 865your chance to join Beyoncé, Jay-Z,and President Obama for an evening inNew York. We’ll fly you in with a guest:http://OFA.BO/eW6Anj—September, 14,2012 870
This contrast in user responses to the two typesof messages (value-oriented emotive messageversus promotional) is precisely typical of howfollowers reacted to the campaign on Facebook.It also reiterates the power of language, even 875when there is no visual aid.
Furthermore, during the 67-day period, thecampaign posted seven videos on the officialFacebook page. Our analysis shows that thesevideos failed to engage users: posts featuring a 880video had a statistically significant negative cor-relation with the number of likes (β = −.358,p < .001), comments (β = −.276, p = .003),and shares (β = −.235, p = .012). In fact, videoposts received much less interactions even than 885text-only posts (see Table 7). The reason forthis may be the extra time and effort required
TABLE 7. User Interaction with PostsFeaturing Photos
to digest the message in a video. Althoughthe message in an image or text is instantlyapparent, a video requires playing and watch-890ing the video (which in turn requires adequatebandwidth, sound, and privacy). This may sug-gest that videos are less efficient at reachinga Facebook audience whose News Feeds arealready saturated with updates from friends and895other fan pages. Or it could merely indicate thatcampaign followers have particular expectations(and receive the corresponding gratifications)from different platforms, such as Facebook,Twitter, and YouTube. Hence, Facebook may900not be a particularly efficient way of promotinga video.
Moving to how users engaged with differ-ent types of rhetoric and post content, theliterature on political rhetoric and persuasion905has long acknowledged the salience of thethree elements of Aristotelian rhetoric (logos,pathos, and ethos) and the impact of politi-cal messages that are “reasonable, passionate,and reflective of the character of the speaker”910(Triadafilopoulos, 1999, p. 741), respectively.Our analysis shows that posts making use ofone or more of those elements were much moreengaging (see Figure 5). Emotive language inparticular dominates much of the campaign on915Facebook, being employed in more than half ofthe posts (see Table 8) and emerged as one ofthe three most impactful variables (the other twobeing photos of Obama and prompts to share).The use of pathos seems to have struck a chord920with campaign followers because emotional
TABLE 8. User Interaction with PostsFeaturing Elements of Aristotelian Rhetoric
acclaims received on average 50,000 more likesthan nonemotional ones. Similarly, 59.5% ofposts denigrating the opponent used emotionallanguage compared to 24.4% in the 2004 cam- 925paign between George Bush and John Kerry(Trammell et al., 2006).
Words such as care, trust, cheer on, firedup and fighting for were seen as appealing toemotions, and, contrary to Bronstein (2013), we 930found that this type of discourse did have a sig-nificant impact on how much people liked (β =.273, ηρ
2 = .080, p < .001), commented on (β =.208, ηρ
2 = .053, p = .006), and shared posts(r = .213, p = .007) even when having con- 935trolled for the presence of photos and promptsto share. This is in line with the contentionsthat the emotional dimension of rhetoric is anincreasingly vital part of contemporary politi-cal communication and youth engagement with 940the potential to initiate their involvement andinfluence their voting choice (Brader, 2005).
FIGURE 5. User interaction with posts featuring emotional appeal.
Gerodimos and Justinussen 15
The campaign was also successful in engag-ing followers with messages focusing onObama’s ethos, that is, his credibility and sta-945tus, because such messages received more likes(U = 1981, p < .001), comments (U = 2851.5,p < .001), and shares (U = 1964, p < .001) thannon-ethos posts. The strategic emphasis on hopeand enthusiasm, as opposed to the use of neg-950ative or attack messages, was rewarded by fol-lowers: positive acclaims were more likely to beshared than other types of posts (ηρ
2 = .043,p = .016) even when controlling for prompts toshare, which as mentioned below emerged as a955key factor.
The inclusion of logical reasoning (logos)did not increase the likelihood of a post receiv-ing more likes. This is interesting as it mayindicate the limits of reason in contemporary960political discourse (or it could simply meanthat the Obama campaign was just not as goodat framing logical arguments as they were atprojecting emotions and credibility). However,citizens who followed the Obama campaign on965Facebook were willing to engage in a publicdialogue on posts that utilized rational argumen-tation, because the use of logos had a statis-tically significant relationship with the numberof shares (U = 1489, p = .001) and comments970(U = 1826, p = .045) and they still engaged sub-stantively with policy content (see Table 9). Thiscan actually be attributed to the presence of par-ticular policy themes: education posts were byfar the most popular, while statements on taxes975(ηρ
2 = .029, p = .045) and foreign policy (ηρ2 =
TABLE 9. User Interaction with Different PolicyAreas and Issues
.027, p = .052) attracted significantly greaternumbers of comments, having controlled for thepresence of a photo.
On the other hand, posts featuring action- 980oriented personal appeal (e.g., “If you’re stand-ing with the president, we’ve got a free stickerfor you” or “Make sure your friends and familyknow the choice on taxes in this election”) wereless likely to be liked (U = 2515, p = .020). 985Similarly, we found that posts about competi-tions (β = −.173, p = .017), promotional links(β = −.235, p = .029), and photos of celebri-ties (β = −.318, p = .045) received significantlyless user interaction. 990
DISCUSSION: THE POWER ANDLIMITS OF POLITICAL
PERSONALIZATION
Our analysis showed that the Obama cam-paign made highly strategic and focused use 995of Facebook as a tool for promoting its keymessages and, crucially, for mobilizing support-ers to act on its behalf. The main focus ofthe posts was Obama’s personality and fam-ily, while rhetorically, the campaign depended 1000mostly on emotions (pathos) and to a lesserextent on credibility (ethos). Although pol-icy statements did feature during the sampledperiod, they were obscured by a preoccupationwith Obama’s character and also by daily calls 1005to action. These findings largely concur withrecent studies (Bronstein, 2013; Katz, Barris &Jain, 2013; Lilleker & Jackson, 2011; Serazio,2014) that challenge the widespread percep-tion of the Obama campaign’s digital presence 1010as revolutionary and emphasize the continuingimportance of campaign strategy.
A closer look at Obama’s own style, aswell as of the particular political contextwithin which the 2012 campaign took place, 1015offers an interesting explanation for the cam-paign’s focus on personality rather than record.Foley (2013) argues that the gap betweenObama’s grand rhetorical vision and every-day policy pragmatism has produced a cer- 1020tain kind of presidential ambiguity that ham-pers his attempt to connect with the Americanpeople. Negotiating that gap—which involves
16 JOURNAL OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & POLITICS
defending, contextualizing, and explaining com-plex policies and decisions that the president1025may genuinely believe to be the right ones—isa process of translation that requires substantiveengagement with people’s realities and knowl-edge gaps. This process has been impeded notonly by Obama’s own style of decision mak-1030ing, which tends to be introverted and reflec-tive (Foley, 2013), but also by the actions ofother actors in the public sphere of the UnitedStates. Furthermore, the adverse economic cir-cumstances of Obama’s first term have meant1035that a core part of his record could only beframed as what Foley calls a “negative achieve-ment,” that is, the economy not getting worse.In this context, the capacity of new media suchas Facebook to allow for potentially direct com-1040munication between the president and the publiccould have provided him with a way of bypass-ing the “noise” produced by other politicalactors.
Despite the intensive use of personalization1045in a rhetorical attempt to close the gap betweenthe candidate and his supporters, the discourseof the Obama campaign on Facebook was highlymanaged and close-ended: only one out of163 posts asked followers to consider what1050could be classified as a substantive question.Therefore, although the campaign successfullyused Facebook to extend and mobilize its fanbase, the strategic discourse did not encouragethe creation of loops of feedback, which are1055key to building a dialogic relationship (Kent &Taylor, 1998). By focusing on Obama’s fam-ily and personality, the campaign essentiallycontrolled the discussion, because neither ofthese topics is particularly conducive to substan-1060tive and in-depth political engagement on thepart of the citizens. Although policy discoursecould be equally close-ended, readers mayhold strong opinions and be prepared to artic-ulate them, challenging the official message.1065Hence, our evidence concurs with Baldwin-Philippi (2012), who identified and describedemerging aspects of indirect and discreet con-trol exercised by political campaigns on theWeb, such as self-censorship, determining what1070participants will talk about (agenda-setting),focusing on winnable topics, and nonissuecoverage.
Vaccari (2010) argues that Obama’s2008 campaign use of innovative forms of 1075political communication, such as data-assistedguidance, constituted a hybrid model of top-down control and bottom-up empowerment(while also noting the tensions that occasionallyoccur between the two). Yet, postmodern 1080personalization and strategic segmentation aredifferent from real empowerment and dialogue,especially when the outcome and substance ofthe campaign’s policies, issue responses, andoverall discourse are entirely managed from the 1085center. In other words, the fact that politicaladvertising (because this is essentially what theObama campaign’s Facebook posts constituted)is becoming much more sophisticated andrhetorically personalized does not make it any 1090less strategic. On the contrary, it is preciselythis unprecedented level of organization anddiscipline—translating into a highly integratedand strategic use of new media—that, accordingto previous studies, was vital to the Obama 1095campaign’s success in 2008 (Cogburn &Espinoza-Vasquez, 2011). Although Facebookposts on the campaign’s official page may notbe the ideal vehicle for microtargeted messages,the increasing sophistication, scope, and reach 1100of Facebook’s personalization algorithm (seeGerodimos & Gray, 2013)—along with astrategic shift toward the integration of ads intothe News Feed may soon allow that kind ofcampaigning to take place through Facebook, 1105too.
Directing Facebook followers to spread thecampaign’s message may signify an importantchange in terms of where and how politicalcampaigning takes place, but it does not nec- 1110essarily constitute a paradigm shift in terms oftruly interactive communication between politi-cians and citizens. Having said that, even close-ended and strategic rhetoric, almost by defini-tion, entails the agency of citizens, its success 1115depending on the extent to which it can capturethe moment and articulate issues, conflicts, orsociopolitical cleavages that are salient amongthe people (kairos and stasis, respectively; seeMartin, 2013). In other words, political broad- 1120casting requires an acute understanding of howcitizens feel and what they need; listening is aprerequisite of successful strategic rhetoric.
Gerodimos and Justinussen 17
Furthermore, the act and process of engag-ing with a campaign may well have multiple1125benefits for a citizen’s civic skills (such as polit-ical sophistication), social capital, and overallparticipation. In fact, Bode (2012) argues that,through interaction, conversation, and possiblepreference alteration, Facebook use may not just1130lead to civic skills but may also influence users.In that respect, future research should try tolook at the effects and benefits of civic inter-action on social media beyond the instances ofcommunication itself.1135
At this point, the limitations of the studyshould be acknowledged. Although our analy-sis captured every message posted in the twomonths before the 2012 election, this sample isstill a partial snapshot in the context of a massive1140and multimedia campaign that had started sev-eral months before Election Day. Furthermore,due to the study’s angle, we did not log or ana-lyze the content of comments posted by follow-ers on the campaign’s various posts. Although1145such an undertaking would have certainly pro-duced valuable insights regarding the quality,nature, and depth of civic deliberation amongObama’s followers, it fell outside of this partic-ular analysis’s remit. The number of interactions1150each post received is a metric that can only pro-vide tentative and indicative findings of whatcontent people are more likely to engage with onFacebook. A broad range of elements will influ-ence that process of engagement: users’ personal1155attitude to politics and social media use, theirhabits in using social media (some never like,others always like), the temporal and geograph-ical context around a particular message, thecultural and social context around the sent mes-1160sage, and the individual’s situational context(mood, in a rush, personal bias). It is impos-sible to measure all of these on a large scale.However, significant associations were estab-lished, revealing—or rather, suggesting—a gen-1165eral tendency or inclination to engage more withparticular themes or types of rhetoric. Althoughusers exposed to published messages are in thefirst instance those who have liked (effectivelysubscribed to) Obama’s official Facebook page,1170hence implying a Democrat inclination in amajority of the target audience, when an individ-ual likes or shares a post, this becomes visible to
their networks, exposing other Facebook usersto the published messages as well. 1175
Finally, as our intention was to look at merelywhat was “on the page” and how users engagedwith that material at the basic level of usingFacebook’s features, we cannot make conclusiveclaims about the intentions of the campaign’s 1180communication strategists or, indeed, about anylong-term effects on the followers or the exter-nalities of the messages communicated throughthat page. Still, our analysis produced a richbody of data that provides us with important 1185insights regarding both the 2012 Obama cam-paign itself and, more broadly, about emergingpatterns of online political communication andengagement.
Further qualitative research is needed into 1190the motivations, meanings, and significance ofa Facebook interaction (like/comment/share) tothe platform’s users. For example, does a “like”only express positive sentiments? How muchaffinity or endorsement is usually a prerequi- 1195site to liking content (merely superficial andimpulsive response or significant and meaning-ful agreement)? And how does an individualdecide what to share and what not to?
Thinking more broadly in terms of the rela- 1200tionship between new media and political com-munication, our analysis of the 2012 ObamaFacebook campaign revealed elements of bothnormalization (focus on candidate, underutiliza-tion of the medium’s potential) and innova- 1205tion (more positive tone, space for debate evenif the discourse is close-ended). Despite not-ing that the claims of postmodern campaign-ing are overstated, Larsson (2013) argues thatthe potential for structural change rests with 1210politicians and with citizens, because both sideshave the resources to enforce change. As shownearlier, the Obama campaign’s followers werequite selective in what types of messages theyinteracted with, largely overlooking promotional 1215posts such as calls to action and celebrityendorsements, and engaging with character andfamily messages as well as policy statements,which would seem to go against fears of “dumb-ing down.” 1220
The question then arises: is the highly sophis-ticated, digitized, and personalized permanentcampaign inherently at odds with a mode
18 JOURNAL OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & POLITICS
of substantive citizen-politician communicationand even coproduction of political ideas? Will it1225ever be possible—and is it even desirable—tocombine the efficiency, highly strategic mes-sages, centralized operations, and war-like men-tality of political campaigning with substantiveforms of civic interaction? Such civic input, if1230not necessarily shaping policy, could at leastenhance both politicians’ understanding of thereality on the ground and citizens’ understand-ing of the complexities and constraints of con-temporary policy making in a highly globalized,1235decentralized, and interdependent world. Suchdialogue might have significant benefits for bothsides, boosting empathy and systemic trust, evenif politicians were to stand their ground (whichmight actually enhance their popular standing).1240
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
An early draft of this paper was presentedat the ECREA Political CommunicationSection Conference, “New Trends inPolitical Communication: Evidence, Theories,1245Implications, Opportunities,” September 19–20,2013, in Milan, Italy. The authors wish tothank the participants of that conference, JITP’sthree anonymous referees for their very helpfulsuggestions, and Samir Bhatti for his assistance1250with the statistical analysis.
NOTE
1. Because the recording of posts only started onOctober 10, 2012, the samples were initially divided intotwo groups; post interactions from before October 10(39 days) were recorded after the post had been published1255for a while. For example, a post from September 10 hada month of exposure when recorded while a post fromOctober 1 merely had 10 days of exposure, potentiallycompromising the comparability of the number of interac-tions, because these accumulate over an indefinite period of1260time. Samples recorded after October 10 were consistentlyrecorded every day. To counter this potential limitation, apreliminary analysis was carried out to establish if thesetwo groups of posts could be compared. The number ofinteractions in every post gathered after October 10 was1265recorded repeatedly in the first five days after a post
was published to establish whether there was a saturationthreshold after which interaction with the post diminished.The purpose of this was to ensure that the number ofinteractions in posts recorded more than five days after 1270they were published could be compared to other posts.Our preliminary analysis showed that the number of newinteractions receded considerably after the third day andalmost ceded five days after a post was originally pub-lished, indicating that older posts coded after several days 1275of exposure and newer posts coded consistently after fivedays constituted a homogeneous and workable sample.
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