Business as Usual? Assessing Amplified Political Posts Across Social Media Platforms During the COVID-19 Pandemic

IF 5.5 1区文学 Q1 COMMUNICATION Social Media + Society Pub Date : 2024-12-20 DOI:10.1177/20563051241301203

Roy Aulie Jacobsen, Anders Olof Larsson

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Abstract

Social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (now X), play a crucial role in facilitating connections between politicians and citizens, particularly during a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic. This article examines the characteristics of viral social media posts in Norway and Sweden during the initial wave of the pandemic. Despite their geographical proximity and cultural similarities, Norway and Sweden adopted different approaches to the pandemic, providing a compelling basis for comparative analysis. Employing a visual computational approach, this study maps viral posts by analyzing engagement metrics such as likes, reactions, shares, and comments. A close reading of popular posts investigates the communication strategies employed across platforms and national contexts. The findings reveal that political criticism on Twitter attracted substantial engagement, while Instagram posts leaned toward self-promotion. On Facebook, popular posts exhibited a more varied use of communication strategies, reflecting a nuanced approach to engagement across different social media environments.

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一切照旧？评估 COVID-19 大流行期间社交媒体平台上被放大的政治帖子

社交媒体平台，如 Facebook、Instagram 和 Twitter（现在的 X），在促进政治家与公民之间的联系方面发挥着至关重要的作用，尤其是在 COVID-19 大流行这样的危机期间。本文研究了挪威和瑞典在疫情初期病毒式社交媒体帖子的特点。尽管挪威和瑞典地理位置相近、文化相似，但两国在应对大流行病时却采取了不同的方法，这为比较分析提供了令人信服的依据。本研究采用可视化计算方法，通过分析参与度指标（如喜欢、反应、分享和评论）来绘制病毒性帖子。通过对热门帖子的细读，研究了在不同平台和国家背景下采用的传播策略。研究结果表明，Twitter 上的政治批评吸引了大量参与，而 Instagram 上的帖子则倾向于自我宣传。在 Facebook 上，热门帖子展示了更多样的传播策略，反映了在不同社交媒体环境中参与的细微差别。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Social Media + Society COMMUNICATION-

CiteScore

9.20

自引率

3.80%

发文量

111

审稿时长

12 weeks

期刊介绍： Social Media + Society is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal that focuses on the socio-cultural, political, psychological, historical, economic, legal and policy dimensions of social media in societies past, contemporary and future. We publish interdisciplinary work that draws from the social sciences, humanities and computational social sciences, reaches out to the arts and natural sciences, and we endorse mixed methods and methodologies. The journal is open to a diversity of theoretic paradigms and methodologies. The editorial vision of Social Media + Society draws inspiration from research on social media to outline a field of study poised to reflexively grow as social technologies evolve. We foster the open access of sharing of research on the social properties of media, as they manifest themselves through the uses people make of networked platforms past and present, digital and non. The journal presents a collaborative, open, and shared space, dedicated exclusively to the study of social media and their implications for societies. It facilitates state-of-the-art research on cutting-edge trends and allows scholars to focus and track trends specific to this field of study.