Abstract
The turnout in the 2019 European Parliament in Ireland was unusually low at Irish standards. However, it fits the picture of a largely uneventful election campaign that ran rather ‘on the side’ with hardly any highlights worth mentioning. However, the election results turned out to be consequential, leading to a significant shift in the balance of power when it comes to the Irish seats. The parties’ Facebook campaigns strongly focused on spreading information and to mobilise voters but hardly aimed at initiating interaction with voters. Thematically, the Facebook campaign was in line with the issue ownership theory and focused on the national level while rather neglecting European issues—even Brexit that hits Ireland particularly hard.
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Notes
- 1.
Newman et al. (2020).
- 2.
It should be noted that one party was much more active on Facebook: Solidarity–People Before Profit, with 277 posts, 9.6 per day. However, since this analysis focuses on the parties that made it into the EP, this party was excluded from the analysis.
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Magin, M., Vigen, M.G. (2021). When Nothing Happened but Much Changed: How Political Parties in Ireland Used Facebook in the 2019 EP Election Campaign. In: Haßler, J., Magin, M., Russmann, U., Fenoll, V. (eds) Campaigning on Facebook in the 2019 European Parliament Election. Political Campaigning and Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73851-8_9
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