Who is Leading the Campaign Charts? Comparing Individual Popularity on Old and New Media

• In Event: Politicians Online: Antecedents and Effects

Abstract

Traditionally, election campaigns are won in the mass media. Candidates’ best bet, then, used to be to aim for getting attention through these traditional media outlets. The question of this paper is whether this knowledge still holds today, when social media outlets are becoming more popular. Do candidates who dominate the traditional media also dominate the social media? Or can candidates make up for a lack of mass media coverage by attracting attention on Twitter? This paper aims to answer this question by paring Twitter data with traditional media data for the 2014 Belgian elections. Our findings show that the two platforms are indeed related and that candidates with a prominent position in the media are generally also most successful on Twitter. This is not because more popularity on Twitter translates directly into more traditional media coverage, but mainly because a small political elite dominates both platforms.

Authors

• Patrick van Erkel, University of Antwerp

• Evelien Dheer, iMinds-MICT-UGent

• Raymond Harder, U of Antwerp

• Peter Van Aelst, U of Antwerp