The Role of Political Influencers in Electoral Campaigns

As political parties struggle to reach their constituencies via legacy media and offline campaigns, running paid social media advertising campaigns has become the norm. However, due to a substantial increase in online advertising costs, changes in algorithms, and the shift of user preferences towards more authentic content, the power of traditional social media campaigns has been curtailed. This has pushed political parties towards working with social media influencers, particularly when engaging young audiences. However, neither the magnitude, nor the effect of this change can be fully understood based on existing research. In particular, further efforts are needed to understand how political influencers are integrated into electoral campaigns run by political parties or candidates, how important they are for overall campaign strategies, and what impact they have on the electoral behavior of their followers on the one hand, and on the financing of electoral campaigns on the other.

The goal of this Research Topic is to explore the techniques used by political parties and candidates in working with social media influencers during their electoral campaigns, as well as the impact of such cooperation, both in terms of social media engagement, and electoral behavior. The Research Topic will explore both formal and informal endorsement deals in different political contexts, their financial and regulatory context, the media environments in which they unfold, and the extent to which they can influence voting decisions. By doing so, contributions to this research topic will address an important gap on the literature on political influencers which has primarily focused on political influencers’ discourse and on their impact on the political attitudes and behavior of their followers, but has paid comparably less attention to the aspects related to political finance, and particularly electoral campaigns. By doing so, we may better understand how political influencers not only challenge previous models of political communication, but also provide new avenues for campaign financing.

The Research Topic invites both quantitative and qualitative contributions that cover social media advertising with a focus on political influencers and their activities during electoral campaign periods. Contributions from across the globe are welcome, as well as single-case, comparative and large N studies. The Research Topic is open to a broad variety of methodological approaches from the social sciences, especially political science, media studies, and communication.

This Research Topic welcomes contributions addressing the following or related subjects:

-Analyses of parties’ campaign spending in social media during electoral campaigns;

-The relationship between the narratives of official party campaigns and political influencers;

-The social characteristics of demographics targeted by political influencers;

-The motivations of political influencers and the impact of their political activity on other partnerships;

-The impact of political influencers on voting intention and behavior;

-Party elite perspectives on working with political influencers;

-Case studies on the role of political influencers in particular electoral campaigns;

-The role of different social media platforms in political influencer campaigns;

-Legacy media responses: how political influencers contribute to the hybridization of media systems

Keywords: social media, influencers, campaigning, political parties, advertising, digital politics

Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.