Social Media has Become a Preferable Medium for Political Candidates  

Bossetta, M. (2018). The digital architectures of social media: Comparing political campaigning on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat in the 2016 US election. Journalism & mass communication quarterly, 95(2), 471-496.

According to Bossetta, political communication on social media is mediated by a platforms technical protocol that enable, constrain, and shape users’ behavior. The transformations in the social media landscape are said to have encouraged political actors to adopt new platforms as well as new features in order to reach different groups of people. The author states that to avoid negative effects with potential voters, political candidates need to be sensitive to the norms of appropriate content and interaction on social media. If these politicians fail in their online performances, they risk being perceived as out-of-touch, inauthentic, and less electable to the followers. The author adds that for a platform to be characterized as a social medium, it should be able to support interactions among users. This makes it easy for both users and politicians to engage either through personal accounts or through pages. In the study, Facebook has come out as a favorable platform since it allows users to easily search and subscribe to politician’s accounts. It is also an attractive and best choice for campaigns to post content.

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