Election 2020: who spends and who wins on social media ahead of New Zealand elections

If participation rates on social media determined which parties will form the next government, New Zealand’s parliament would soon look very different.

With its daily interactions on social media averaging 7.7 percent engagement rate, Advance NZ (which incorporates the New Zealand Public Party) would be far ahead of Labor and National.

Opposing the Covid-19 Public Health Response Act of 2020, 5G and the United Nations, and promoting protests against the lockdown, may only lead to 1 percent in opinion polls, but it is a winning formula in line.

Advance NZ’s anti-lockdown march broadcast live in August garnered 255,600 views, 86 percent of them generated by just 4,793 people who shared the posted video.

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That’s a higher engagement rate than many posts by renowned New Zealand political advocate on Facebook, Prime Minister and Labor leader Jacinda Ardern, whose own posts routinely attract between 120,000 and 500,000 views.

Politics in the economy of attention

Across the political spectrum, parties have seen the biggest increase in visibility when they post on hot topics: taxes, lockdowns, economic stress, use of face masks, even tobacco prices.

A meme photo of New Zealand First’s leader Winston Peters, who pledged to remove the tobacco excise tax, was one of the top-performing posts, earning 24 times the usual number of comments, likes, shares. and views of the game.

The platform’s algorithms reward posts that exceed typical party page engagement rates. In a kind of snowball effect, high-performing posts rise higher in the news and deeper into the minds of voters.

The algorithms of social networks are proprietary and are modified often. But its purpose is clear: to read user searches and interactions to offer them more related content and keep them continuously engaged.

With this power of persuasion built into technology and our attention now as a commodity to be bought and sold, no politician can ignore social media today.

Organic vs paid media

In New Zealand, from July to September 25, there were 9,537 paid ads on Facebook and Instagram related to social issues, elections and politics, at a total cost of $ NZ 1,054,713.

The parties pay special attention when their content has a limited organic reach.

Labor and Jacinda Ardern have the highest organic reach, with 1.6 million Facebook followers combined (most of it from Ardern). The party spent just $ 41,396 on posts in a 30-day period ending in September.

By contrast, National and its leader Judith Collins lack organic reach. With only 180,000 fans on their Facebook pages, they need to spend to keep up: $ 143,825 in the same 30-day period.

Of that, $ 35,000 went to a massive push for people to see Collins’ ads on social media to “like my page to keep up.” Ultimately, the strategy is to boost party votes and build greater organic reach in the future.

Scope and reinforcement

But even the smaller parties have spent more than Labor. The Greens paid $ 82,000 for social advertising in the same period.

However, Auckland Central Greens candidate Chloe Swarbrick (who has more social following than party co-leaders James Shaw or Marama Davidson) went organically viral with a simple photo of her in a vintage party jumper.

The clothing replicas were rushed into production and sold out overnight at the party’s fundraising site.

So social media works, as ACT and its leader, David Seymour, no doubt attest too. Having spent $ 78,000 to promote its “Change Your Future” bus tour and the “Hold Other Parties Responsible” message, the party is rising in the polls.

And despite its organic strength, Advance NZ has spent nearly $ 7,000 on social media. Half of that went into increasing the numbers in protests against the lockdown, but that spending is also clearly designed to reach voters who are not yet fans or friends of the fans.

Cultivating reality

The benign view is that social channels allow parties to remain in the conversations and thoughts of voters. In return, voters connect more with politicians and learn about the issues that concern them.

But because of the way those algorithms work, voters are rarely able to see the other side of politics and issues. Instead, those first few clicks, views, and interactions lead down the rabbit hole and create filter bubbles.

Filter bubbles have been blamed for slowly polarizing audiences, causing gradual changes in voter behavior and perception. This is a very different political sphere than what existed even five years ago.

For example, anyone who follows only certain politicians might not have known that several social posts misrepresenting Ardern’s comments on agriculture in the television leaders’ first debate had subsequently been verified and discredited.

Over time, the filter bubble leaves room for fake news to churn inside these echo chambers where users often fail to verify content. Misinformation thrives on repetition and familiarity.

But is there evidence that digital messaging influences voting behavior? Yes, according to at least one major US study, especially when shared with friends and family. Such forms of social transmission seem more effective than the very use of social networks by politicians.

If attitudes cultivated online translate into voting behavior in the real world, then Advance NZ may simply be a forerunner of things to come in New Zealand.

– Sommer Kapitan and Patrick van Esch are senior marketing professors at AUT

This article originally appeared on The Conversation.