par Jacobs, Laura 
;Kins, Lucas ;Close, Caroline ;Marie, Awenig
Organisme financeur Université libre de Bruxelles
Publication Publié, 2025-09-22
;Kins, Lucas ;Close, Caroline ;Marie, Awenig Organisme financeur Université libre de Bruxelles
Publication Publié, 2025-09-22
Rapport
| Résumé : | This research note seeks to determine the extent to which party leaders–as central figures of Belgian political life—managed to gain traction on X before and throughout the campaign for the June 2024 election, based on their use of attacks towards political opponents. The note is divided into two sections. First, we assess the overall performance of party leaders’ communication across these two periods. Second, we examine whether party leaders’ use of negativity was ‘rewarded’ by X audiences, which we measure through the engagement metrics associated with each post. Despite their contested reliability as indicators of a politician’s effective popularity , engagement metrics remain a suitable tool for distinguishing political actors who capture online audiences’ attention from those who go (mostly) unnoticed. Considered the interdependence of the political, traditional and social media agendas (Gilardi et al., 2022), the performance of a post does matter. In fact, people that run parties’ digital communication strategies often rely on engagement metrics to evaluate the performance of a publication (Kins, 2025), and are well aware of what best resonates with audiences. |
