Key Words and Political Parties in the 2020 Pre-Election Campaign on Facebook

Abstract

Abstract The research paper analyses key words found in pre-election communication of electorally successful political parties, based on which the main communication differences among those parties and the specifics of pre-election communication, as well as the pre-election discourse as a whole, are identified. Research material consists of political parties’ microblogs published on individual political parties’ Facebook profiles in the period from January 1, 2020 to February 28, 2020, with a reference corpus formed by the total of these microblogs. The analysis showed professionalization of political communication, the use of new, but also traditional ways of interaction with the electorate, pre-election communication based on the presentation of candidates, offensive and combative tone of the most successful parties, self-presentation, hints of persuasive and manipulative techniques, topic points of electoral programmes, but also thematic neutrality and non-specificity that suggest smaller electoral success.