Explaining Online Personalized Politics: A Cross-National Comparative Analysis of Social Media Consumption of Parties and Leaders

The personalization of politics (the process of politicians’ strengthening at the expense of political parties) has long been studied. This study focuses on online personalism in the consumption of political parties and their leaders on Twitter and Facebook and aims to find its explaining factors. Following the normalization/equalization debate, it sets hypotheses regarding the relationship between variables from offline to online personalized politics. Using multilevel analysis of Facebook and Twitter data of more than 140 parties from 25 democracies, it finds that the leaders’ position significantly affects online personalism in most of the consumption aspects of social media. It also shows that country’s offline personalization, leader’s tenure, party populism, party age, party’s governmental status, vote share, and the leadership selection method have effects on some of the indicators for online personalism on the consumption side. It concludes that offline political power is reflected online.