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Social media partisans vs. party members: Political affiliation in a digital age

par Kosiara-Pedersen, Karina;Scarrow, Susan;Van Haute, Emilie
Référence West European politics
Publication A Paraître, 2025-01-30

Article révisé par les pairs

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Résumé :

In recent years political parties have diversified their affiliation options, including by developing social media followings, but so far there is little evidence about who (if anyone) is taking advantage of these new options. This study uses a unique Danish survey that enables to observe this type of political engagement. First, it analyses political parties’ social media followers (SMFs) and shows that this type of activity is a sizeable form of political engagement that follows the logics of non-institutionalized participation. Second, the study identifies a subset of SMFs, the social media partisans (SMPs), who are monogamous in their online following, thus resembling a distinct form of party affiliation. Moreover, the findings show that these SMPs are demographically more like party voters than are parties’ traditional members, thereby offsetting some of the inequalities of membership as an institutionalized form of participation. SMPs are also more willing than other party voters to amplify party messages online, but are not functionally equivalent to party members when it comes to activism levels. By providing some of the first evidence of who parties’ social media followers are, and how they resemble (and differ from) other party supporters, this study gives a first glimpse of the ways in which parties could or do benefit from cultivating SMPs as a distinct supporter base.