Information Sources Shared on Facebook and Networking by a Populist Leader in Greece

Greek politicians tend to more intensively use their social media accounts during the pre-electoral periods. In general, Syriza had to fight both established mainstream parties and the mainstream media since its founding, including while in power. Yet Syriza’s campaign on the Internet between 2006 and 2015 relied mainly on alternative media activists. In 2019, Alexis Tsipras prioritized sharing content from digital sources (mainly own created content such as comments or videos posted on his FB page) and occasionally articles from the websites of newspapers or links from the Syriza website or FB account. Not surprisingly, there were no links shared from radio or TV stations. The content shared by Tsipras, other than his own messaging which constituted the vast majority of his posts, came from predominantly left or centre-left publications. The reciprocity network of Tsipras was limited to posts shared between the account of Alexis Tsipras and the official account of his party. The accounts that shared the posts of Alexis Tsipras, ́were either accounts or pages dedicated to Alexis Tsipras or Syriza. The communication strategy of Alexis Tsipras lacked a discernible “populist pattern” of communication, at least in terms of the types of sources shared and the type of social media network that the leader of Syriza participates in.