Influenced of Facebook Campaign on the Presidential Election of Sri Lanka in 2015

Abstract— Facebook is one of the most popular and well known social media and utilized for election campaigning in different parts of the world. Recently, during the Presidential Election in 2015, a remarkable campaign was launched on Facebook, and it was a focal point in the history of social media campaign in Sri Lanka. This manuscript aims to analyze the influence of Facebook election campaign on the Presidential Election of Sri Lanka in 2015; investigates the mechanisms/strategies used; the impact of this campaign on Facebook users; perceptions and their behaviours’ demonstrate the findings of qualitative and quantitative content analysis of the Facebook pages of the two presidential candidates; and it is an exemplified sample containing 316 posts collected on the use of Facebook during the period of election. Findings show that both candidates used an emotional and motivational appeal to create a social capital. Analysis shows that the comments given to the posts were influenced by the element of persuasion used on the posts. Users’ views mainly highlighted that Facebook can be used as an influence channel for political campaigns and as a means to gain social prestige from voters.