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Politicians in the spotlight: the personalization of Belgian parties’ communication on X

par Kins, Lucas ;Marie, Awenig ;Close, Caroline ;Jacobs, Laura
Organisme financeur Université libre de Bruxelles
Publication Publié, 2025-04-15

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Résumé :

This note investigates which individual politicians are most prominently featured in the official communication of political parties on X (formerly known as Twitter) in Belgium, a country known for its party-centric political system. It focuses on parties’ publications before and during the June 2024 electoral campaign. The note is divided into two sections. First, we assess the extent and evolution of personalization, both before and during the 2024 electoral campaign and how this varies across parties. Second, we examine whether the attention is concentrated on a limited number of political figures or more broadly distributed across different personalities, based on their gender and function within the party. To do so, we categorize politicians into four categories: party leaders (or presidents), members of parliament (MPs, of all different levels), ministers, and candidates that are running for a mandate, but do not hold one yet. All our analyses differentiate between Dutch-speaking and French-speaking political parties. It supplements a previous analysis of political parties’ policy messaging on X before and during the 2024 election campaign.