Experiencing Political Advertising Through Social Media Logic: A Qualitative Inquiry

Abstract

The allocation of political advertising in social media is rising in Western campaigns. Yet audiences, unlike those of television advertising, are no longer isolated and passive consumers of linear discourses from politicians; users can now interact, share, and merge political advertising with other messages. Literature has dealt with the effects of such affordances separately, yet not in an integrative, holistic way that makes it possible to observe how they interact with each other. Hence, this article explores qualitatively how users experience, engage with, and make sense of political advertising in social media, and how its affordances mediate the attitudes, responses, and meanings users bring to political advertising and its sponsors. Under the lenses of the theory of social media logic, which points out the properties of social media—popularity, programmability, datafication, and connectivity—that structure users’ experiences, we conducted six focus group sessions with Mexican users (n = 34) during the 2021 federal campaigns. Findings show the fuzziness of digital advertising for users, which blurs with other formats like infographics or memes, the crucial role of individual linkages for advertising attention and attitude formation, a mismatch between the platform’s political feed and citizens’ information needs, and the tactics users perform to tame or avoid political content, disengaging them from campaigns.