Between anger and love: A multi-level study on the impact of policy issues on user reactions in national election campaigns on Facebook in Germany, Hungary, and Norway

Abstract

Eliciting user reactions is an important tactic for political actors using social media like Facebook to seek attention for campaign messages on policy issues. Still, little is known about policy issues’ effect on user reactions and how structural factors play into this relationship. Applying a standardized manual content analysis on Facebook posts from political parties and their top candidates during the German, Hungarian, and Norwegian national election campaigns in 2021/2022 (N = 4988), we investigate the relationship between policy issues and two of Facebook’s “emotional reactions” (“angry” and “love”). We find that posts addressing the economy, energy policy, and foreign policy drive more “angry” reactions, while environmental posts drive more “love” reactions. While effects are largely uniform across different party types, there are more variations between countries. Our analyses suggest that differences between individual parties and candidates and situational factors are vital to understanding the relationship between policy issues and user reactions.