Brute force effects of mass media presence and social media activity on electoral outcome. Issue 4 (2nd October 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kovic, Marko; Rauchfleisch, Adrian; Metag, Julia; Caspar, Christian; Szenogrady, Julian
• Is Part Of: Journal of information technology & politics. Volume 14:Issue 4(2017)
• Page Start: 348
• Page End: 371
• Publication Date: 2017-10-02
• Subjects: Behavioral economics -- brute force effects -- election -- Facebook -- mass media -- media effects -- parliament -- social media -- Switzerland -- Twitter; Electronic government information -- Periodicals; Internet in public administration -- Periodicals; Information technology -- Political aspects -- Periodicals; 320.0285
• DOI: 10.1080/19331681.2017.1374228
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1933-1681

Abstract

ABSTRACT: In this study, we analyze whether the mere volume of presence in mass media and the mere volume of activity on social media convey advantages to candidates in parliamentary elections. Based on the theoretical model of bounded rationality, we call these potential effects brute force effects. During the last month of the election campaign of the Swiss federal election of 2015, we tracked the presence of all 873 candidates in the canton of Zurich, the most populous canton, in a broad sample of mass media. Additionally, we tracked those candidates' activity on Facebook and Twitter. The results of our multilevel Bayesian estimates show that mass media presence has a consistent nontrivial impact on different aspects of electoral outcome. Furthermore, social media activity also has a nontrivial impact, but only in terms of resonance (reactions to candidates' social media activity). Overall, our results suggest that brute force effects of of mass media presence and social media activity can have substantial impact on voting behavior.