770437

editorial2018
JMQXXX10.1177/1077699018770437Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly

Editorial Essay
Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly
2018, Vol. 95(2) 333­–342
Social Media in Political © 2018 AEJMC
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Methodological Challenges

The impact of social media in political campaigning around the world is undeniable.
Latest statistics show that close to three fourth of U.S. adults use social networking
sites such as Facebook and Twitter, with social network use becoming almost ubiqui-
tous among young adults, according to recent data from the Pew Research Center
(2018). Globally, an estimated 2.62 billion people use social networks on a daily basis
in 2018, with that number projected to reach 2.77 billion by 2019 (Statista, 2018).
With their tremendous growth, social media have become an indispensable part of
modern political campaigning, both in the United States and internationally. Platforms
such as Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit have changed how political campaigns are run;
how politicians and the public access and share political information; and the way we
learn about politics, form opinions and attitudes, and ultimately engage in or disen-
gage from the political process.
While social media have clearly affected our understanding of political communi-
cation and its effects on the public, it is difficult to see clear monolithic effects. A 2009
meta-analysis showed that Internet use in general had positive, although relatively
small, effects on different aspects of political engagement (Boulianne, 2009). Similarly,
a 2015 meta-analysis demonstrated only limited effects of digital media use on politi-
cal participation, showing that only half of 170 reported effects from 36 selected stud-
ies were statistically significant (Boulianne, 2015). Yet another meta-analysis found
generally positive effects of social media on three different dimensions of engage-
ment, namely, social capital, civic engagement, and political participation, when sur-
veying 116 relationships/effects reported in 22 different studies (Skoric, Zhu, Goh, &
Pang, 2016).
These comprehensive aggregate studies offer evidence that the effects of social
media consumption and use are hardly uniform across different contexts and groups.
For example, studies with random samples of youth are more likely to identify a sig-
nificant effect, compared with general population samples (Boulianne, 2015). Also,
studies that rely on panel data are twice less likely to find positive and statistically
significant relationships between social media use and political participation
(Boulianne, 2015). Studies have also noted that the relationship between Internet use
and political engagement varies depending on type of use. For example, findings by
Gil de Zuniga, Bachmann, Hsu, and Brundidge (2013) suggest that only expressive
334 Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 95(2)

uses of social media predict online as well as offline political participation, including
voting, while consumptive uses do not. Similarly, Dimitrova and Bystrom (2017)
demonstrate that active social media use positively affects caucus participation while
passive use has a negative effect. Yet, other studies have shown strongest effects when
online resources are used for informational purposes (Boulianne, 2009).
Findings such as these suggest that social media effects may depend on multiple
factors, including what kind of channels are examined (e.g., Twitter vs. Instagram vs.
Snapchat), the specific audience characteristics and predispositions (antecedents such
age, political interest, campaign involvement, and other psychological factors) and
user motivations (e.g., relationship maintenance vs. political engagement vs. self-pro-
motion), what type of social media use is captured (informational, expressive, or rela-
tional use), and the political campaign context overall.

Summary of Special Issue

This special issue includes eight articles that span the wide range of questions and
methodologies represented in research on social media and political campaigning. They
all address the complexities of social media content, use, and effects in innovative
ways, and use data from the United States, Asia, Australia, and Europe. Bosseta’s study
tracks the use of social media during the 2016 U.S. Presidential primaries and compares
cross-platform content on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat through observational
data. Hale and Grabe zoom into the use of visuals in Clinton and Trump Subreddits
during the 2016 U.S. Campaign and connect that to news values and gender leadership
qualities. Extending social media research outside the U.S. context, Bruns examines the
role of Twitter in Australian federal elections, comparing its use between the 2013 and
2016 campaigns. Another important aspect of the political conversation on social media
revolves around fake news, which Brummette and colleagues show has become highly
politicized on Twitter, forming network clusters along party lines.
Moving beyond the content and use of social media, four contributions in this spe-
cial issue address important theoretical questions about the effects of social media on
various outcomes. These pieces clearly demonstrate that social media “effects” are not
uniform. From a normative standpoint, they can be alarming and encouraging at the
same time. Cacciatore and colleagues focus on how social media affect learning and
demonstrate empirically that use of Facebook for news consumption and news sharing
purposes is negatively related to political knowledge, pointing to potential detrimental
effects in terms of deliberative democracy. Chan examines social media use among
voters in Hong Kong and observes contingent effects of political ambivalence and
political disagreement on the relationships between partisan strength and social media
use. Moving to the Hungarian context, Marton investigates the link between Facebook
performance and electoral success during the Hungarian general election, finding
empirical support for the two-step flow model: It is not the political candidates but
their followers whose sharing of information on social media has an impact on their
friends and acquaintances. Finally, Lee et al. examine how politicians’ personal disclo-
sures on social media affect vote intention, suggesting that publicizing politicians’
Editorial Essay 335

private information may make them appear less competent under certain conditions.
Thus, social media can have positive effects in terms of persuasion and turnout, but
also may make politicians appear less competent.

Key Challenges and Directions for Future Research

Based on these multifaceted insights, we outline some key challenges and share some
suggestions for future research on social media and political campaigning in the fol-
lowing sections. Despite the progress made, we believe there are three particularly
thorny questions that researchers in this area have to grapple with: How to measure the
use and content of social media, how to capture the context of social media use and
application, and how to advance theory building in our field.

Social Media Use and Content

When looking at audience studies on social media and politics, the lion’s share of
research uses survey methodology, mostly cross-sectional surveys with self-reported
measures of social media. Cross-sectional surveys are useful for many reasons, the rapid
pace of data collection being one of them. However, as has often been noted (see
Hopmann, Matthes, & Nir, 2015), cross-sectional surveys raise concerns about spurious-
ness and reverse causal order (Boulianne, 2015; Skoric et al., 2016). If social media use,
for instance, predicts participation controlling for all kinds of variables, we can equally
assume the opposite effect: Those who tend to participate are also more likely to turn to
social media. No matter the direction of an effect, in such models, an unmeasured third
variable can cause spurious relationships, potentially leading to erroneous conclusions.
Although the limitations of such designs are well known and more panel studies
have been published in recent years (e.g., Dimitrova, Shehata, Strömbäck, & Nord,
2014; Theocharis & Quintelier, 2016), cross-sectional studies continue to dominate
research on social media and political campaigning. Even more importantly, the recent
surge of interest in conditional process models has accelerated the use of cross-sec-
tional data, further obscuring the limited usefulness of such designs (Hopmann et al.,
2015). Conditional process models, applied to cross-sectional data, are purely correla-
tional in nature and thus unable to test causal claims.
In addition, cross-sectional studies cannot inform us about the dynamics of social
media use and its effects over time. This, however, is a prerequisite to understanding
how social media can exert their influence given the dramatic changes in audience
structures over the last decades. When exposure to traditional news sources (i.e.,
newspapers, television news) is in decline and exposure to news on social media is on
the rise, we need to be able to test whether social media lead to a real increase in par-
ticipation and media effects, controlling for a decreasing importance of traditional
journalistic news. In a longitudinal perspective, if those cohorts who relied on tradi-
tional news sources before now turn to social media, it comes as no surprise that social
media have substantial effects on the audience. Thus, the effects we observe may be,
to some extent, “old wine in a new bottle.” As individual-level media repertoires
336 Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 95(2)

change in response to rapid technological developments, influential new channels are

likely to emerge at the cost of traditional ones. If this is the case, we would basically
observe the same effect, just for a different channel. The question therefore is whether
social media facilitate political engagement of those who used to tune out in the world
of traditional media, or alternatively, if those who are politically engaged simply add
social media to their repertoire at the expense of traditional channels. Of course, there
are many arguments against this zero-sum line of reasoning, such as the networked
character of social media and its expressive nature, both of which may drive the effects
we observe in research on social media and political campaigning. Yet it seems safe to
say that longitudinal studies with a large time span or multiple-cohort sequential
designs are to convincingly clarify this conundrum (see Farrington, 1991).
The second thorny issue that future scholarship needs to address involves the ways in
which we conceptualize and measure exposure in social media research. Almost the
entire body of research relies on self-reports asking respondents to estimate the time or
amount of exposure to social media. There are two issues with this strategy. First, mak-
ing judgments about social media exposure is a demanding task because exposure events
are fragmented and scattered across situations, devices, and platforms, posing a critical
challenge for the accuracy of self-reports (Araujo, Wonneberger, Neijens, & de Vreese,
2017; de Vreese & Neijens, 2016; Scharkow, 2016). Social media are often used while
performing other media- or non-media-related tasks simultaneously, which arguably
decreases attention and thus the ability to accurately report exposure to political informa-
tion (Segijn, Voorveld, Vandeberg, & Smit, 2017). In fact, recent studies using tracking
data as a “gold standard” clearly indicate that respondents are not really good at provid-
ing accurate estimates of their online use behaviors (Scharkow, 2016). Together with the
finding that measures of turnout and political participation are prone to over reporting by
respondents (Karp & Brockington, 2005; Persson & Solevid, 2014), at least some cau-
tion is in order when correlating social media use measures with participatory responses.
Second, self-report data about exposure remain uninformative about the actual con-
tent that respondents were exposed to. As de Vreese et al. (2017) have put it, “While
theoretically interesting and innovative, such designs say little about the actual impact
of the media content and can thus be dubbed ‘mere exposure studies,’ i.e., they show
a plausible correlation between media usage and an outcome variable” (p. 222).
However, understanding the political content that social media users are exposed to is
crucial for theory building in the area. For instance, as Eveland, Morey, and Hutchens
(2011) have argued, we need a better understanding of how the notion of “political” is
actually understood by survey respondents, especially in a social media context where
the lines between political and nonpolitical information become increasingly blurred.
By the same token, asking respondents about their perceived amount of exposure com-
pletely ignores the important role of visuals. The growth of image-based social net-
works like Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, or Snapchat has changed the ways in which
parties and politicians are leading their campaigns (Page & Duffy, 2018). Visuals are
key to our understanding of the persuasive power of social media. Experimental
designs may be one solution to this as they provide us with complete control over the
content that respondents are exposed to, including visuals. However, most if not all
Editorial Essay 337

experimental studies on social media and political campaigning have used forced
exposure (for instance, Heiss & Matthes, 2016) which is a clear limitation given the
abundance of choices in the social media news environment.
Some strategies to alleviate these two problems have been suggested in the litera-
ture (Araujo et al., 2017; de Vreese & Neijens, 2016; Moy & Murphy, 2016), such as
particular question types for media exposure, the use of anchors, Smartphone and app-
based measurements, eye-tracking data, and, most importantly, combining survey data
with tracking data or content analytic data. The combination of content analytic and
survey data in particular remains a blind spot when charting future research on social
media and political campaigning. The challenge is, of course, that social media content
is so diverse and multifaceted that it can hardly be sampled with traditional sampling
techniques. Yet social media research in the age of “big data” opens up new avenues
for social scientists. Using mixed-method research designs in examining the role of
social media is highly recommended. For example, researchers should strive to com-
bine computational analyses of social media content with survey data about social
media use as well as real-world indicators on political and civic engagement.
Companies such as Facebook and Twitter collect troves of granular-level data, such as
user engagement, that can be accessed through their Application Programming
Interfaces (APIs). The beauty—and the challenge—of social media is that it presents
scholars with large amounts of data. These big data sets require use of new analytical
tools such social networking analysis and topic modeling that, combined with better
measures of social media exposure, can open up entirely new avenues for research.

The Context of Social Media

The articles in this issue demonstrate that the uses and effects of social media can only
be understood by taking the specific context into account. Countries and regions differ
in their party system; their media system; the characteristics of their voters; the con-
tent, scope, and polarized nature of the political campaigns; the degree of selective
exposure based on political preferences; and even the structural nature of social media
environments (see Van Aelst et al., 2017). However, the majority of research on social
media and political campaigning is based on data from the United States which clearly
cannot be generalized to other countries and contexts.
Even more importantly, most research is based on single-country studies, and truly
comparative research is rare if not almost nonexistent (but see Mosca & Quaranta,
2016; Xenos, Vromen, & Loader, 2014). This is troubling because single-country stud-
ies are bound by the idiosyncrasies of the specific context (see Hopmann et al., 2015),
and as a result, we lack knowledge about the contextual and cultural factors that drive
the content and effects of social media in the political world. Therefore, we need to
study social media content, use, and effects in a comparative context. A recent meta-
analysis reached the same conclusion, stating that future research has to be cross-
national (Boulianne, 2015). Findings by Boulianne (2017) suggest that the effects of
informational uses of social media on participation are smaller in countries with a free
and independent press, such as the United States. Although a large number
338 Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 95(2)

of important and insightful studies have been conducted in the United States, it is
imperative for future researchers to move beyond U.S.-centric questions and study the
phenomenon in a comparative manner, taking into account national context and the
local political environment to provide a truly international perspective, ideally apply-
ing multilevel models. Existing evidence suggests that, indeed, national context and
dominant political system (e.g., established democracies vs. other) make a difference
(Boulianne, 2015, 2017in). Therefore, moving beyond single-country studies is criti-
cal to determine the role of social media in political campaigns.
But it is not only the national context that matters. The specific context in which
political social media messages and visuals are embedded in a typical newsfeed needs
to be taken into account as well (Knoll, Matthes, & Heiss, 2018). Studies frequently
overlook the fact that social media are heavily used for entertainment and relational
purposes and, to a much lesser extent, for political information, especially so among the
youth (but see Theocharis & Quintelier, 2016). There is a risk in overlooking the non-
political uses, which may lead to overestimating the positive influences of social media
as inhibiting uses of social media may be neglected. Furthermore, political and nonpo-
litical uses cannot be fully separated on social media because political content and
entertainment-oriented content are simultaneously present. A typical newsfeed com-
pletely mixes both. Thus, when investigating the effects of political content, its nonpo-
litical context needs to be taken into account as well. There is a long line of research on
context effects suggesting that the surrounding content of a message can have substan-
tial consequences for how the message is perceived and interpreted (e.g., Baumgartner
& Wirth, 2012). A theoretical explanation can be found in affective priming (Kühne,
Schemer, Matthes, & Wirth, 2011). Exposure to entertainment will foster positive emo-
tions or meta-emotions. This, in turn, may decrease the likelihood of negative cogni-
tions in citizens information processing, thus dampening the perceived severity of
political issues (Kühne et al., 2011). Hence, when looking at political social media
content, exposure, and effects, we argue that the entertainment-oriented context should
be taken into account as well.

Theory Building
Last but not least, social media and politics research, just like any good research, needs
to be based on strong theoretical models and contribute to theory building. Rather than
solely relying on describing the use of social media tools in political campaigning, future
research should develop more nuanced models helping our understanding of why and
how such tools are being used. Also, when it comes to the use and effects of social media
at the level of citizens, we need full-fledged theoretical models, especially regarding
direct and indirect effects on political and civic engagement. Social media, as a compara-
tively new phenomenon to our field, should be approached in theoretical terms first,
developing theories, models, and concepts that can then be tested in a second step.
It may be tempting to skip the first step and rush ahead to the second step, leading to
an abundance of studies, most of them correlational, on the antecedents and conse-
quences of social media use in a rather short amount of time. We are not calling for a
Editorial Essay 339

unified theory of all social media uses and effects. Yet, we believe that at the moment,
our field lacks overarching theoretical frameworks or models, ideally competing ones,
which can guide our selection of concepts and help to contextualize our findings. Just to
give one example, there are several explanations for why social media use may impact
political participation. Some scholars argue that social networks may activate in-group
identity, thus fostering participatory behavior (Valenzuela, 2013). Others have suggested
the mediating role played by interpersonal communication (Shah, Cho, Eveland, &
Kwak, 2005), news exposure (Chan, 2016), network size (Neo, 2015), expression, or
efficacy (Chan, 2016; Knoll et al., 2018). The majority of studies have tested isolated
theoretical ideas, mostly boundary conditions and the differences that occur for several
alterations of dependent and independent variables. The issue with this approach is that
several explanations are suggested and tested without controlling or explicitly testing
alternative or parallel ones. Thus, even if several studies support different notions, we
cannot simply add them up together to one body of knowledge. This type of research
strategy has hampered our ability to fully understand the role that social media plays in
political campaigning around the world.
We also call for more research shedding light on the underlying psychological
mechanisms of social media effects, necessitating more experimental work and media
psychological theory building. As one recent example, the Social Media Political
Participation Model (Knoll et al., 2018) attempts to explain the psychological pro-
cesses and boundary conditions for social media to affect participation. Using a goal
psychological approach, it explicates how citizens form, activate, and implement par-
ticipatory goals before and during a behavioral situation. In a nutshell, the key idea is
that citizens engage in several appraisal processes, which mark a chain of contingen-
cies that must be met for social media to foster engagement. Depending on their moti-
vational state, citizens must first expose themselves, either intentionally or incidentally,
to political information they regard as relevant (relevance appraisal). Then, they must
conclude that there is a gap between a present state and an undesired/desired future
state (discrepancy appraisal), and they must regard a future state as attainable (attain-
ability appraisal), which in turn leads to a formation of an explicit participatory goal
that must be activated against other goals in a real behavioral situation (dominant goal
appraisal). At each step, a potential impact of social media can be impeded, as for
instance, when people come to believe that there is a discrepancy between a present
state and an undesired state, but they feel one cannot do anything about it or they sim-
ply activate more important alternative goals in a behavioral situation. Even this
model, however, is unable to incorporate the full array of theoretical explanations for
why social media matter in campaigns. We therefore urge scholars to suggest new
theories or theoretical models, understood as a network of intertwined and testable
assumptions, rather than isolating the effects of single independent variables on vari-
ous outcomes.

Conclusion
In closing, we believe that—building on the articles published in this special issue—
research on social media and political campaigning has to address many challenges.
340 Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 95(2)

We hope that scholars across the world will use this special issue as a springboard for
theory building and an inspiration to design theoretically and methodologically
demanding studies. There can be no doubt that the future of political campaigning is
closely tied to the content, uses, and effects of social media, and therefore, our disci-
pline will be measured on how we tackle these challenges in our future work.

Daniela V. Dimitrova
Professor and Director of Graduate Education
Iowa State University

Jörg Matthes
Professor and Department Chair
University of Vienna

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