Introduction
Political parties and their candidates need their content to be shared during campaigns and while in government due to the higher likelihood of winning an election and the associated long-term influence over public policy. Hence, the ongoing communication between parties and their bases to maintain reputation is crucial. With the rise of communication on social media, these communication efforts provide an understanding of how political parties encourage their followers and navigate power in the political system of the United States. From this, insights can be developed into different types of languages used by parties to promote content in an environment that features a political divide.
In particular, using goal pursuit language is a highly influential strategy to spread messages within and between the silos of political divide. However, there is no research to indicate how parties use goal pursuit language to increase the viral strength of social media content in such a fragmented political environment where parties need to ensure their content is well-crafted and well-targeted for success. Another gap lies in the question of why some political social media content generates more sharing than the other although political communications are already crafted in ways that ensure virality. This study addresses the knowledge gaps by introducing goal pursuit language as an important and overlooked factor in understanding the sharing of political content on social media.
Goal pursuit language refers to language that reflects distinct preferences for goal pursuit strategies identified by regulatory mode theory. Regulatory mode theory holds that individuals
have distinct preferences for goal pursuit strategies, which involve either assessing courses of action (“assessment”) or initiating action (“locomotion”) toward a goal. Moreover, the study asserts that preferences for locomotion language among liberals and assessment language among conservatives explain why some political communication content generates more sharing online. Examining this helped identify whether posts crafted in the language of assessment (vs. the language of locomotion) lead to higher retweets. Eventually, aligning language to reflect either assessment or locomotion creates a “regulatory fit” that matches a consumer’s preferred goal pursuit orientation with a political message, leading to a sense of “feeling right” and resulting in favourable reactions.
Method and sample
A pretest was presented to assess the historical alignment of regulatory mode language among the two major political parties between 1933 to 2016, followed by the main study and a replication study. For the main study, all tweets originating from the official Twitter handles of the Democratic and Republican parties were collected for a 12-year period between 2007 and 2019, resulting in 55,560 tweets. For the replication study, the study used tweets from the two parties for the period between October 2019 and June 2020. Text processing and statistical analysis methods were used for the collected data.
Key findings
1. Tweets are more likely to be shared when the language used conveys goal pursuit strategies that match the audience’s political motivations. For instance, tweets crafted in a language that invites the audience to scrutinise a policy would receive more sharing from individuals with high assessment motivations than those written in language encouraging followers to take action to support that policy. In contrast, tweets written in a language that encourages supportive action would receive more shares among users with high motivations toward locomotion.
2. Tweets sent by the Republican Parties are more likely to be predominant in using the language of assessment (as opposed to the language of locomotion) and such tweets lead to more retweets for Republicans.
3. Although Republicans are more likely to share tweets with assessment-oriented language, if their party gains political power, this effect is reduced. Particularly, the increased power makes it easier for the party to implement political plans without as many obstacles and as much need for attention-grabbing (or assessment-oriented) language, hence reducing the effect over time.
4. As Democrats gain political power, their avoidance of using assessment-oriented language is amplified.
Recommendations
1. When crafting social media content, political parties should consider the impacts of goal pursuit language. They should ensure a match between the language used in a political message and the audience’s goal pursuit/motivations to generate more sharing. However, parties should also consider that gaining power can affect the effect of assessment-oriented language on the sharing of political content.
2. As different political parties speak different goal pursuit languages, it is essential to bridge political divides. A simple approach to encourage greater dialogue between opposing political sides is to learn to speak the preferred goal pursuit language of their opposition.
3. Public education efforts about how content on social media should include an understanding of the role of the legislative and executive branches of government in shaping responses. Understanding the influence of power on political content sharing can help people make informed decisions and engage in discussions more effectively.
4. All parties have a role in contributing to public policy debates, and their ability to contribute to these debates must be safeguarded even when there are power differences. Therefore, stakeholders (i.e., the press and judiciary) need to ensure that all parties are able to access high-quality information on policy issues.
Lead Researcher
More information
The research article is also available on eprints.