Category: Research papers
-
Europe’s parties rise and fall on Facebook to a national beat
Across 173 party and leader pages in 20 countries, monthly swings in engagement were mostly national. Party families, including the radical right, did not move together across borders.
-
Parties used to link to themselves. Then they linked to the news.
Across 410,000 links posted by European parties and leaders on Facebook, the share pointing to news media doubled between 2010 and 2020, and news links drew the most engagement.
-
Did Facebook kill parties’ reach? Engagement per follower dipped, then came back
Across 186 European party and leader pages, engagement per follower fell by a quarter to a third from 2016 to 2018, then recovered by 2020.
-
Paid and earned: do British parties pay for the Facebook pages people already engage with?
Parties pay for their own brand pages and rely on leaders’ pages to attract an audience without payment.
-
Who pays for the party? How British parties organise their Facebook and Instagram advertising
Party pages account for just 8.3% of political ad spending on Meta in Britain. How the parties spend it differs sharply, from Labour’s many local pages to Reform UK’s leader-led approach.
