Group Type and Social Media Engagement Strategies in the EU: The Case of British Interest Groups on Facebook

Abstract

Although interest group strategies have been studied by a number of authors who compare different types of groups, our knowledge about how these different types of groups differ in the way they use social media as a strategy to realise their goals is limited. In this paper, we use the hierarchy of engagement model and investigate how British public interest groups and sectional groups, which are active at the European Union (EU) level, engage with the public on Facebook. Compared with information and community-type posts, action-type posts can attract more attention on social media. Public interest groups can use action-type messages as a tool for attracting public attention, thus, alleviating their relative disadvantage in attracting and maintaining members. Results show that the use of action-type messages are significantly higher for public interest groups.