SeMi Park, HaSung Hwang, Journal of Internet Computing and Services, Vol. 17, No. 2, pp. 87-96, Apr. 2016
10.7472/jksii.2016.17.2.87, Full Text:
Keywords: SNS, election campaign, special election, political communication

Abstract

Considerable research over the years has been devoted to ascertaining the impact of social media on political settings.In recent days, Social Network Sites (SNS) such as Facebook allowed users to share their political beliefs, support specific candidates, and interact with others on political issues. This study examines the role of SNS as the means of political campaign. The study tasks the case of the 2015'sspecial election, Seoul Korea. The analysis aims to identify how candidates use Facebook or Twitter to interact with voters by applying functional theory of political campaign discourse developed by Benoit. In this study, we analyzed the candidates' SNS messages in terms of political behavior such as self-expression, informing policy, asking voters to participate in political events. Among them the results indicated that two candidates, Jung, Dong Young and Byun, Hee Jae, both of them used SNS to express themselves the most. The study also found that two candidates used mainly the strategy called 'acclaim' which praises their own strengths. In terms of topics of SNS messages (policy versus character) there was different between two candidates. Jung, sent message in relation to 'character' the most, while Byun contained 'policy' message on SNS the most. Based on these findings implications and directions for future studies are discussed.

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