The viral politic : A quantitative content analysis of SSU and Socialdemokraternas socialmedia publications

This quantitative study aims to explore the difference in political communication onsocial media usually exposed to a younger target group and usually exposed to an olderand broader target group. Since this study looks at two different platforms that are eachpopular among each age group, this study also looks at how political communication candiffer depending what platform you are on. Through a content analysis Sweden's biggestparty’s Facebook and their youth association’s TikTok publication have been analysed.The analyzed time period is the year before a parliamentary election which means thematerial is part of an election campaign. The time period before a parliamentary electionis the most active period for politicians on social media, which makes this an appropriatetime for such study. The study's theoretical framework consists of frame analysis and theagenda setting theory. The suitability of these theories has been motivated by the aim ofexamining how political party organizations frame their publications and what topics theychose to highlight. Codes have been created with inspiration from Aristotle's rhetoricalappeals, ethos, pathos and logos. From these appeals have different tonalities beenselected and searched for in the publications. More than half of the publications hadtonalities built on ethos, making it the most common appeal. This shows a desire toappear credible. Moving on to the individual tonalities, there was a major difference inseriousness and playfulness. The youth association had a lot more publications with aplayful tonality than their mother party, which had a higher proportion of publicationswith a serious tonality. The youth association also had a significantly higher amount ofpublications with a derogatory tonality. When it comes to the result regarding the politicalsubjects there was not much difference. However there was one subject that stood out, orrather the lack of subject. The youth association had twice as many publications with nopolitical subject compared to its mother party. The results confirms that there is a difference in what political communication you are exposed to depending on whatplatform you are using.