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- Title
The use of hashtags as a political branding strategy.
- Authors
Mas Manchón, Lluís; Guerrero-Solé, Frederic
- Abstract
Political brands are using Twitter intensively during campaigns. The objective of this study is twofold: to build a theoretical framework to pose that the use of hashtags can be a brand strategy; and to analyze how political brands are effectively using hashtags. First, drawing on the social identity approach, this article3 argues that brands are becoming social identities enacted through horizontal user-to-user relationships. Second, a sample of a million tweets from the last two Spanish elections in 2015 and 2016 is collected to analyze the type of hashtags posted by politicians and the networks of interaction. Results show that political brands mainly used three types of hashtags: party, candidate and branded hashtags; and mainly interacted with their own hashtags. This can be considered as a traditional brand identity strategy. However, a brand community strategy would be more aligned with the horizontal and top-down nature of social networking sites as well as with today's allencompassing political debate. Political brands should foster a co-creative brand identity process to build more effectively the organization's meaningful values.
- Subjects
ONLINE social networks; BRAND identification; POLITICAL debates; BRAND communities; GROUP identity
- Publication
Revista Internacional de Relaciones Públicas, 2019, Vol 9, Issue 17, p5
- ISSN
2174-3681
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.5783/revrrpp.v9i17.582