Information, Communication & Society

ISSN: 1369-118X (Print) 1468-4462 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rics20

Personalization of politics on Facebook: examining

the content and effects of professional, emotional
and private self-personalization

Manon Metz, Sanne Kruikemeier & Sophie Lecheler

To cite this article: Manon Metz, Sanne Kruikemeier & Sophie Lecheler (2019): Personalization of
politics on Facebook: examining the content and effects of professional, emotional and private self-
personalization, Information, Communication & Society, DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2019.1581244

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2019.1581244

Published online: 20 Feb 2019.

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INFORMATION, COMMUNICATION & SOCIETY
https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2019.1581244

Personalization of politics on Facebook: examining the

content and effects of professional, emotional and private self-
personalization
Manon Metza, Sanne Kruikemeierb and Sophie Lecheler c

a
Mannheim Center of European Social Research, Mannheim, Germany; bAmsterdam School of
Communication Research, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; cDepartment of
Communication, University of Vienna, Wien, Austria

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

With the integration of social media in political communication Received 8 January 2018
repertoires, politicians now permanently campaign for support Accepted 7 February 2019
online. By promoting their personal agenda, politicians
KEYWORDS
increasingly profile themselves independent from their associated Social media; communication
parties on the web (i.e., self-personalization). By focusing on self- style; Facebook;
personalization as a multi-layered concept (i.e., professional, personalization; user
emotional, private self-personalization), this study investigates engagement; content
both the use and consequences of self-personalization on analysis
Facebook. A manual content analysis of politicians’ Facebook
posts (N = 435) reveals that self-personalization is indeed often
used as a communication style on Facebook and is most often
present in visual communication. Moreover, the study shows that
the use of a more emotional and private style provides a
beneficial tool for politicians’ impression management. Publishing
emotional and private content yields positive effects on audience
engagement, suggesting audiences’ demand for more intimate
and emotional impressions of public figures on the web.

With the rise of social media, political communication has undergone a fundamental
change. Politicians permanently campaign for support from the electorate, often indepen-
dent from the electoral cycle. Social media provide the infrastructure for such permanent
campaigning by giving politicians the opportunity to directly create, choose, and send con-
tent to citizens (Larsson, 2015, 2016), thereby circumventing traditional mass media (Den-
nis, Chadwick, & Smith, 2016, p. 11). This ultimately creates a more personalized
environment, in which individual politicians’ profile themselves independent from their
political party. Consequently, scholars have documented a trend towards more individua-
lized campaign patterns in politics and media today (Vergeer, Hermans, & Sams, 2013).
Studies have started to examine the extent to which self-personalization occurs online,
and the consequences of self-personalized styles as a political tactic (McGregor, 2018).
First indications hint towards considerable amounts of self-personalization online (e.g.,
Gerodimos & Justinussen, 2015; Small, 2010) with certain types of self-personalization

CONTACT Manon Metz manon.metz@mzes.uni-mannheim.de Mannheim Center of European Social Research,

68159 Mannheim, Germany
© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 M. METZ ET AL.

inducing citizen engagement both online (e.g., Bene, 2017; Borah, 2016) and offline (e.g.,
Kruikemeier, van Noort, Vliegenthart, & de Vreese, 2013).
However, while both the extent and consequences of online self-personalization have
been recurring subjects of interest, previous work has not frequently examined different
types of self-personalization present on social media. This study adopts the theoretical
conceptualization of Van Santen and Van Zoonen (2010) and Van Aelst, Sheafer, and
Stanyer (2012) who show that personalization is a multilayered concept.1 This under-
standing diverges from the traditional news media-oriented perspective seeing personali-
zation as the visibility of politicians at the expense of political parties (e.g., Holtz-Bacha,
Langer, & Merkle, 2014). So, to bridge the gap, we first conduct a manual content analysis
of politicians’ Facebook posts. Thereby, we take into account visual communication on
social media (Abidin, 2017; Bene, 2017) by examining self-personalization in both texts
and visuals. This is important as it has been suggested that visuals have the capacity to
easily transmit personalized communication (Parry, 2015). Secondly, we test the effects
of each self-personalization type (i.e., professional, emotional, private) on audience
engagement (i.e., sentiments, shares, and comments), which puts the results into a broader
perspective. Thus far, research has focused extensively on who uses what type of social
media with what kind of motivation and effort (e.g., Baxter & Marcella, 2012; Lappas
et al., 2016; Larsson & Skogerbø, 2018; Lilleker, Tenscher, & Štětka, 2015; Magin, Podschu-
weit, Haßler, & Russmann, 2017; Oelsner & Heimrich, 2015; Quinlan, Gummer,
Roßmann, & Wolf, 2017), providing us with a clear understanding of how political actors
deploy social media. Yet, we add to this, by taking into account the perspective of the audi-
ence, as this is examined far less often (expect for: Bene, 2017; Borah, 2016; Gerodimos &
Justinussen, 2015). Taken together, this study asks (a) to what extent different types of self-
personalization are present in political communication on Facebook, and (b) how self-per-
sonalization affects audience engagement online.

Personalization of politics on social media: examining the use and effects

Personalization online
The theoretical concept of political personalization addresses the focus on individual poli-
ticians at the expense of political parties and institutions (Rahat & Sheafer, 2007), and is
often discussed in relation to media coverage (Van Aelst et al., 2012). From this perspec-
tive, personalization is a process in which news stories increasingly feature single political
figures to make a story more newsworthy (Strömbäck, 2008). Recently, however, political
personalization has been introduced as a frequently used communication strategy on the
web. The individual politician as the central communicator promotes a more personalized
agenda, sharing a more intimate, private, and less party-centered perspective (Vergeer
et al., 2013, pp. 4–6). Individual politicians position themselves as ‘ordinary’ humans
behind the official office (Bene, 2017; Gerodimos & Justinussen, 2015; Manning, Pen-
fold-Mounce, Loader, Vromen, & Xenos, 2017; Ross & Bürger, 2014), emotional charac-
ters that share personal feelings and emotional narratives (Bene, 2017; Borah, 2016;
Bronstein, 2013; Douglas, Maruyama, Semaan, & Robertson, 2014), and as professionals
who hold individual qualities and individually exert political tasks and activities (Hermans
& Vergeer, 2013; Jung, Tay, Hong, Ho, & Goh, 2017; Kruikemeier, 2014).
 INFORMATION, COMMUNICATION & SOCIETY 3

A more personalized communication style online closely fits the personalization typol-
ogies of Van Aelst et al. (2012) and Van Santen and Van Zoonen (2010), confirming others
who also note that personalization is a multi-layered concept (for an overview, see Langer
& Sagarzazu, 2018). While Van Aelst et al. (2012) have defined personalization as a two-
folded concept (i.e., individualization vs. privatization), the authors themselves accept and
state that behavioral aspects of personalization, such as emotions, are excluded from their
definition (Van Aelst et al., 2012, pp. 214–215). Moreover, their definition is less applicable
in online environments, since social media are, by nature, personalized tools that provide
individual politicians with their own communication channel (Ekman & Widholm, 2015;
Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010, pp. 63–64; Stieglitz & Dang-Xuan, 2013). Following the
definition of Van Aelst et al. (2012), communication stemming from individual politicians
would always be identified as personalized communication. In contrast, the personaliza-
tion typology by Van Santen and Van Zoonen (2010) distinguishes between three content
dimensions: professional, emotional, and private communication. While professional per-
sonalization targets qualities and individual activities related to the official office,
emotional personalization puts the personal feelings of the politician to the forefront,
and private personalization can be identified as intimate information about the private
persona. This latter conceptualization is chosen in the present study, because it under-
stands personalization as individualized communication, but acknowledges the multidi-
mensionality of the theoretical concept. We acknowledge that Van Santen and Van
Zoonen (2010) examined television portraits, that is biographies produced by journalists,
which of course differs from politicians who create original content themselves on their
social media platforms. However, we believe that the conceptualization is inclusive and
encompasses the most important aspects of online personal narratives (which is also
shown in previous work, see Kruikemeier, 2014). Van Santen and Van Zoonen argue
that it is ‘useful to distinguish between different foci of personal narratives, because
they have different relevance for the political content … ’ (p. 64). Fewer studies focus
on the actual communication styles of politicians and, by adopting this conceptualization
of Van Santen and Van Zoonen (2010), we examine different aspects of these communi-
cation styles and investigate their relevance to the political performance of politicians.
Communication that is focused at politicians’ competence, such as their professional
activities, are relevant for their political performances. Politicians’ emotions say something
about how a politician feels about social and political issues. Politicians’ private life says
something about the person behind the political office (McGregor, 2018). We therefore
apply their personalization conceptualization but extend their work by examining perso-
nalization as a narrative stemming from the politician themselves on Facebook (following
McGregor, 2018) in contrast to media narratives stemming from journalists. However, we
also adapt McGregor’s work in so far that we use different levels of such self-
personalization.
All in all, since voters may be significantly affected by personal communication styles as
they increasingly rely on candidate-specific information to form political evaluations
(McGregor, 2018), and because different aspects of self-personalized communication
have different relevance for the political performance of politicians, we believe that the
definition by Van Santen and Van Zoonen (2010) is most appropriate to conceptualize
self-personalization on social media. Therefore, we differentiate between professional,
emotional, and private self-personalization in this study.
4 M. METZ ET AL.

Presence of self-personalization on social media

Scholars have argued that social media are more personally oriented networks, providing
politicians with the opportunity to bypass traditional mass media by creating and choosing
content themselves (Dennis et al., 2016, p. 11; Van Santen & Van Zoonen, 2010, p. 65).
Hence, individualized messages, detached from their political parties (Hermans & Verg-
eer, 2013), have the potential to be featured more prominently on social media. This ulti-
mately creates a more personalized environment in which individual politicians’ profile
themselves (Enli & Skogerbø, 2013; McGregor, Lawrence, & Cardona, 2017); a process
termed self-personalization (see, McGregor, 2018; McGregor et al., 2017).
Overall, studies analyzing the amount of self-personalization on politicians’ social
media profiles confirm this idea: Analyzing the Twitter accounts of Australian politicians
in 2009, Small (2010) shows that 63% of tweets from party leaders contained personal con-
tent. Looking at the Facebook accounts of Obama and Romney, Bronstein (2013) finds
15% of Obama’s, and 25% of Romney’s posts during the course of the 2012 campaign
to provide private information about the candidates and their political activities. More-
over, analyzing Obama’s 2012 Facebook account, Gerodimos and Justinussen (2015)
find that more than half of all posted photos featured Obama himself. In contrast, in
the 2011 campaign for the New Zealand Parliament, Facebook posts mixing personal
and political issues and posts containing personal anecdotes were overshadowed by
much more prominent campaign-oriented posts, issuing events, policies, and political par-
ties (Ross, Fountaine, & Comrie, 2015). In a nutshell, the few existing studies suggest that
social media stimulate the use of personalized communication styles. However, the
definition of personalization varies in the aforementioned studies, which make it difficult
to compare outcomes.
To date, only two studies have performed an analysis based on the definition proposed
by Van Santen and Van Zoonen (2010) or similar conceptualizations. Hereby, both Krui-
kemeier (2014) studying Dutch politicians’ Twitter accounts, and Hermans and Vergeer
(2013) analyzing candidate website strategies across 17 countries in the 2009 European
Parliament election find high levels of professional personalization online, that is, a
focus on individual professional impressions of politicians. In contrast, emotional and pri-
vate forms of personalization have been used less. On the basis of these latter studies, we
expect that professional self-personalization (i.e., focus on individual professional qualities
and activities of a politician) is most often used by politicians on Facebook, followed by
emotional (i.e., politician expresses emotions in their communication) and private self-
personalization styles (i.e., focus on private life).
H1: Self-personalization is present in politicians’ Facebook posts, in which a professional self-
personalization style is most often used, followed by a private and emotional self-personali-
zation style.

The role of visuals in self-personalization on social media

Neither Kruikemeier (2014) nor Hermans and Vergeer (2013) take into account visuals,
when discussing personalization online. So far, this task has mainly been addressed by
qualitative studies, with some recent exceptions (e.g., Filimonov, Russmann, & Svensson,
2016; Gerodimos & Justinussen, 2015; Samuel-Azran, Yarchi, & Wolfsfeld, 2016).
 INFORMATION, COMMUNICATION & SOCIETY 5

However, image impression management has become more important with the rise of
digital networks (Marland, 2012) and visuals have the capacity to transmit personalized
communication easily (Parry, 2015). Both McAllister (2007) and Zamora (2010) suggest
that visuals render presenting concrete political personas much easier than abstract politi-
cal ideas; Loader, Vromen, and Xenos (2016) show that viewing politicians’ visuals on
social media can sketch a more human and humorous image. This claim is supported
by Filimonov et al. (2016), who find that personalization on Instagram accounts of Swed-
ish parties contained particularly high levels of personalization in visuals. Based on this
initial evidence, we can assume that self-personalization finds stronger portrayal in visual
communication. Moreover, as images have been argued to be especially helpful in trans-
mitting the full range of emotions and intimacy in a quick and easy manner (Samuel-
Azran et al., 2016; Schill, 2012), it seems plausible that particular forms of self-personali-
zation (i.e., emotional, private) are more represented in visuals than other forms of self-
personalization (i.e., professional). Due to the relative paucity of investigations, we pose
the following research question:
RQ1: Is self-personalization more present in posts including visuals than in posts without
visuals?

Effects of self-personalization on audience engagement

Due to the interactive nature of social media, people are able to provide feedback on the
content politicians post on their accounts. On Facebook, this direct feedback is expressed
via sentiments (i.e., likes and emojis), shares, and comments. These features serve as an
indicator of how engaged people are with the content (|Gerlitz & Helmond, 2013).
Some more recent studies have investigated how self-personalization styles impact engage-
ment levels within Facebook. A common finding is that particularly private self-persona-
lization positively impacts user engagement. Analyzing Obama’s 2012 Facebook
campaign, Gerodimos and Justinussen (2015) find that photos including private elements
(e.g., the presence of Michelle Obama) generated more likes than photos that showed no
private elements. Bene (2017) shows that in the Hungarian election campaign of 2014,
candidates’ Facebook posts induced significantly more likes and comments when content
incorporated information on the candidate’s family or disclosures of the person behind the
office. Furthermore, experimental evidence suggests beneficial outcomes of private perso-
nalization. Meeks (2017) shows that personalized Tweets containing aspects of private life
and self-disclosure induce more positive evaluations of the respective politicians (e.g.,
friendliness, honesty); Kruikemeier, van Noort, Vliegenthart, and de Vreese (2016) pro-
pose an indirect positive effect of privatized Twitter posts on political involvement.
Moreover, studies examining emotions on social media agree that emotional content
can trigger audience engagement. Borah (2016) suggests that emotionality played an
important role in inducing audience engagement in the US presidential election cam-
paigns 2008 and 2012. Humor, enthusiasm and fear exerted positive effects on both
likes and shares on Facebook. Also, in a US-context, Gerodimos and Justinussen (2015)
show that posts with emotional appeals induced more likes, shares, and comments than
posts without emotional appeal, albeit Bene (2017) finds only posts with negative
emotions leading to more reactions.
6 M. METZ ET AL.

On the contrary, professional self-personalization, focusing on individual political qual-

ities and activities, resembles more traditional presentations of politics that has been
referred to as ‘politics as usual’ (Larsson, 2016). This political focus may collide with
the social nature of social media. To sum up, we assume that private and emotional
self-personalization receive more audience engagement than professional self-
personalization.
H2: Private and emotional self-personalization receive more audience engagement than pro-
fessional self-personalization.

Method
The study draws on a quantitative content analysis of German parliament members’ Face-
book posts. These posts were collected over the course of the last two weeks in November
2016, which were initially identified as regular weeks with no major political events
happening.
While most research on personalized communication in online environments is located
in US-American or Dutch contexts, this study considers Germany, widening the cases
under investigation. While both US and Dutch politicians have been shown to be very
social media oriented (Netherlands: Graham, Jackson, & Broersma, 2016; Hermans &
Vergeer, 2013; US: Geber & Scherer, 2015) and particularly in the US the publication of
personal and especially private content is more normalized (Geber & Scherer, 2015),
the present study examines a political communication culture in which the adaption of
social media is not as widespread and in which sharing private perspectives is not as com-
mon (Geber & Scherer, 2015; Hermans & Vergeer, 2013). A second distinction from pre-
vious literature is the study’s timeframe. Studies discussing personalization focus almost
exclusively on immediate campaign periods (Sörensen, 2016), ignoring the potential to
shape impressions outside of election campaigns. We widen the perspective, acknowled-
ging that politicians today are under permanent campaign pressure (Larsson, 2015, 2016).
Thus, individual politicians also profile themselves in their work as governing or opposing
parliament members (Giasson & Small, 2017), shaping impressions that may impact citi-
zens’ voting decisions in the long run. Last, by examining Facebook, we focus on the plat-
form that has the highest adoption rates in Germany among private users (Tippelt &
Kupferschmitt, 2015) and politicians (Oelsner & Heimrich, 2015; Quinlan et al., 2017).

Sample
To select a subsample of all members of parliament, the ‘Spitzenkandidaten’2 of the sixteen
federal states were chosen. This approach was based upon two premises, confirmed in
multi-party systems: First, Lev-On and Haleva-Amir (2018) have shown that higher-
ranked candidates were more active on Facebook than politicians with lower ranks in
Israel. Second, Van Aelst, van Erkel, D’heer, and Harder (2017) showed that more power-
ful politicians in Belgium, such as party leaders and ministers, were most popular on Twit-
ter, and this popularity was mirrored in traditional mass media. Hence, we assume that
Spitzenkandidaten are more visible on Facebook, and thus reach a broader audience
with their online communication.
 INFORMATION, COMMUNICATION & SOCIETY 7

These politicians were then identified by extracting the ‘Landeslisten’3 of the national
elections in 2013 from those four parties represented in the 17th national parliament. A
total of 64 Spitzenkandidaten were identified, of which 38 were included in the final
sample.4 All Facebook posts were automatically extracted using the tool Facepager (Keyl-
ing & Jünger, 2017). Using Facepager, all data were collected simultaneously in order to
guarantee that potential changes in metrics over time (e.g., number of posts) could not
affect the results. In sum, 435 Facebook posts were collected and coded. For each post,
we collected sentiments (i.e., likes and emojis), shares and comments. Moreover, we
included a number of control variables that have been shown to contribute to Facebook
posts’ popularity (i.e., gender, age, party affiliation of the individual politicians and the
number of overall Facebook fans).

Operationalization
The self-personalization indicators were derived from Van Santen and Van Zoonen
(2010) and adapted to suit a social media context based on Filimonov et al. (2016),
Gerodimos and Justinussen (2015), Kruikemeier (2014), and Otto and Maier (2016).
Self-personalization levels were considered present when the post featured the individ-
ual politician explicitly (i.e., I-form, name or image of the politician). This approach
assured that party-centered communication (i.e., we-form or in the name of the
associated party) was not considered self-personalization. Text and visuals were
coded simultaneously. Due to the higher complexity of coding visuals, the codebook
included several instructions and examples for visual coding.5 A brief overview of
the coding scheme is presented in Table 1. Each indicator was first coded as present
(1) or absent (0). Scores of all indicators were summed and subsequently turned into
binary self-personalization indices (0 = self-personalization level not present, 1 = self-
personalization level present): Professional self-personalization (M = .33, SD = .47),
emotional self-personalization (M = .33, SD = .47) and private self-personalization
(M = .16, SD = .37).

Table 1. Self-personalization levels, indicators and operationalization.

Self-
Personalization Indicators Operationalization
Professional Reference to professional The politician themselves is shown performing activities related to the
activities political function as a member of parliament (e.g., participation in panel
discussions regarding political topics).
Reference to professional Professional qualities related to the politician’s role as a member of
qualities parliament (e.g., honesty, experience, integrity) are shown.
Professional audience The politician acts as a professional on social media directly speaking to the
appeal audience (e.g., ‘ihr’, ‘follower’, ‘fans’) or using the imperative mode
(implying a special status comparable to celebrities on social media) .
Emotional Emotional expression Emotions of politician (e.g., joy, astonishment, anger, grief) are displayed.
Emotional appeal Emotional content (e.g., emojis, memes, humor) is used by the politician.
Private Personal thought Politician expresses thoughts using opinion verbs (e.g., ‘denken’, ‘glauben’,
‘finden’).
Private information Information that is not related to the politician’s role as a member of
parliament is shared. This information is considered intimate and
concerns the person behind the official office (e.g., marital status,
children, favorite football club).
Private impression Intimate impression of the politician’s surrounding (i.e., use of selfie-
perspective) are shown.
8 M. METZ ET AL.

The audience engagement indices shares (M = 67.93, SD = 322.12) and comments (M =

34.41, SD = 99.26) were directly collected via Facepager, likes and emojis were added to
create the sentiments index (M = 568.27, SD = 2388.56).

Reliability
The coding of the self-personalization levels was performed by the first author of the study,
who trained one additional coder. A subsample of approximately ten percent from the
complete sample was drawn randomly to test the quality of the coding instrument.
Inter-coder reliability was assessed with two measures. Both Krippendorff’s Alpha (Kal-
pha) and the standardized Lotus Gold Standard (S-GS) by Fretwurst (2013)6 were calcu-
lated using SPSS version 23.0. Due to the explorative nature of the study and the skewed
dichotomous measurements, we consider the S-GS a more adequate measures of inter-
coder reliability for the present dataset, as more conservative measures are known for pun-
ishing data structures like ours (Aaldering & Vliegenthart, 2016). The results for pro-
fessional (Kalpha = .72, S-GS = .82), emotional (Kalpha = .70, S-GS = .82) and private
self-personalization (Kalpha = .69, std. S-GS = .89) are considered reliable. Given that
the S-GS is above .80 for all self-personalization levels and even the conservative Kalpha
values exceed .67 (Krippendorff, 2012), inter-coder reliability is considered acceptable.

Sample description
The median age in the sample is approximately 54: The oldest candidate in the sample was
73, the youngest 37 years old. Due to the aforementioned approach, there is a bias towards
more popular candidates. The distribution among the four parties represented in parlia-
ment is rather equal: Nine politicians from ‘CDU/CSU’, ‘SPD’ and ‘Gruene’ and with ele-
ven politicians slightly more from the ‘Linke’. The sample contains 19 male and 19 female
politicians. The distribution of female and male candidates is unequal across the four par-
ties. Strongest differences are found between ‘Gruene’ and ‘CDU/CSU’: the sample of the
Green party includes majorly female politicians, the Union parties ‘CDU/CSU’ on the con-
trary incorporate more male politicians.

Results
First, the levels of self-personalization in the collected Facebook posts were examined.
Table 2 shows qualitative examples of posts including either one of the personalization
levels. In line with H1, it was found that posts with professional self-personalization are
most common in the sample (33.3%, N = 145). Interestingly, the share of posts containing
emotional self-personalization is equally high (33.1%, N = 144).7 Posts with private self-
personalization are less represented in the sample (16.3%, N = 71).8 Given these results,
H1 can be confirmed: politicians’ online communication prominently features self-per-
sonalized elements, and this is true for both professional and emotional self-personaliza-
tion. In contrast, in our sample, politicians seem to be rather hesitant to share private
impressions and information on Facebook. This may be partly in line with previous
work which showed that German political websites were less personalized compared to
 INFORMATION, COMMUNICATION & SOCIETY 9

Table 2. Qualitative Coding Examples.

Professional Emotional Private
‘Today, I am participating in a discussion ‘My deepest condolence goes to his ‘It says “See you again” on the cross of
at the IT-summit of the government in family. I knew Peter Hintze since my parents’ grave in Bosau at the
Saarbrücken about the advanced we entered parliament together. Pläuner See. The cross stems from
training in the digital era. In the course He had clear visions and fought for the family graveyard in Kurland/
of the platform “Digital Work them. We will miss him dearly.’b Lettland. Today, candles were lighted
Environment” we have collected many at the Bosauer church for the dead of
good examples in the ministry of the last year – also for my mother,
work. The respective leaflet can, of who died in July. What a nice
course, be downloaded at www.bmas. custom.’c
de or ordered – rather traditionally –
as a print product. Have fun reading!’a
‘The StartGreen Award honours ‘Humor is when you laugh despite : ‘Coming out of my small Prenzlauer
innovative Start-Up Ideas and young D’d neighborhood and seeing a beautiful
entrepreneurs. Today, I had the sunrise http://ift.tt/2gfoJ1h’
chance to welcome the finalists to the
award ceremony at the ministry of
environment and urban development:
https://start-green.net/award/
finalisten/’
a
Andrea Nahles (SPD), 17.11.2016 [Post included photo of two leaflets].
b
Maria Böhmer (CDU), 28.11.2016 [Post included link to an obituary].
c
Elisabeth Motschmann (CDU), 20.11.2016 [Post included three photos of the cross, the graveyard and the church].
d
Elke Ferner (SPD), 18.11.2016 [Post included a shared post illustrating Michelle Obama ironically holding a sign ‘An immi-
grant is taking my job’].

other (West-European) countries (Kruikemeier, Aparaschivei, Boomgaarden, van Noort,

& Vliegenthart, 2015), indicating that this finding might be context dependent.
In response to RQ1, Chi-square tests of independence were calculated between post
type (i.e., text vs. text-visual) and overall self-personalization as well as each self-persona-
lization level. The relation between post type and self-personalization is significant, X 2(1,
N = 435) = 45.19, p < .001. Self-personalized posts are not equally distributed across posts
with and without visuals (M = .61, SD = .49). While in text posts only 39.2% contained a
self-personalized style, 60.8% of the text-visual posts embedded self-personalized
elements.
The difference between post types (i.e., text vs. text-visual) and the use of self-persona-
lization were significant for all three types of self-personalization: We found that the use of
professional self-personalization was higher in a post containing a visual (Mprofessional
= .61, SDprofessional = .49) compared to a post without a visual (Mprofessional = .41,
SDprofessional = .49), X 2 (1, N = 435) = 14.45, p < .001. Additionally, also the use of
emotional self-personalization was higher in a post containing a visual (Memotional = .70
SDemotional = .46) than in a post without a visual (Memotional = .37, SDemotional = 48), X 2
(1, N = 435) = 42.99, p < .001. Lastly, the use of private self-personalization was also higher
in a text-visual post (Mprivate = .66, SDprivate = .48) compared to a text-post (Mprivate = .44,
SDprivate = .50), X 2 (1, N = 435) = 11.49, p < .01. Thus, self-personalization is more present
in posts including visuals than in posts without visuals and this is true for emotional and
private self-personalization, but also for professional self-personalization (see Figure 1).
Last, we performed a multiple regression analysis to examine the impact of self-perso-
nalization on audience engagement. Because observations are not independent and
because the posts (which is our unit of analysis) are nested in politicians, we used clustered
standard errors. Table 3 presents the findings for all three audience engagement
10 M. METZ ET AL.

Figure 1. Percent comparisons for professional (N = 145), emotional (N = 144) and private self-perso-
nalization (N = 71) on posts without and with visuals.

Table 3. Direct effects of self-personalization levels on sentiments, shares and comments.

Sentiments Shares Comments
Constant 4.04 (1.41) 1.06 (1.09) 2.23 (1.62)
Professional −.24 (.02) −.22 (.20) .04 (.26)
Emotional .79*** (.17) .31# (.16) .51** (.16)
Private .57* (.27) .47 (.29) .33 (.24)
Control variables
Age −.02 (.02) −.01 (.02) −.02 (.03)
Gender .27 (.43) −.19 (.38) −.12 (.50)
Linke .75 (.58) 1.03 (.54) .63 (.66)
Gruene .73 (.55) .38 (.41) .96 (.69)
CDU/CSU −.26 (.46) −.47 (.35) −.60 (.58)
Fanpage Likes .00** (.00) .00*** (.00) .00** (.00)
N 435 435 435
R2 .38 .39 .31
Note: Significance levels based on two-tailed significance tests.
#
p < .10, *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.
a
For the dependent continuous variables, the natural logarithm was used due to non-normal distribution.
b
The effects of emotional and private self-personalization become stronger when tested without control variables.
 INFORMATION, COMMUNICATION & SOCIETY 11

indicators.9 Partially confirming H2, we find that both emotional (b = .79, t(425) = 4.50, p
< .001) and private self-personalization (b = .57, t(425) = 2.10, p < .05) positively and sig-
nificantly impact sentiments. Moreover, emotional self-personalization exerts additional
positive effects on shares (b = .31, t(425) = 1.87, p < .10) and comments (b = .51, t(425)
= 3.21, p < .01). In line with H2, professional self-personalization does not affect audience
engagement. None of the control variables10 exert a significant effect on audience engage-
ment with the exception of the overall amount of Facebook Fanpage likes.11
Subsequently, we tested for interaction effects between self-personalization and post
type (i.e., text vs. text-visual). Our results indicate a clear pattern: Private self-personaliza-
tion negatively interacts with visuals on all audience engagement variables (bsentiments =
−1.26, t(424) = −2.67, p < .05; bshares = −1.15, t(424) = −1.75, p < .10; bcomments = −1.67, t
(424) = −3.29, p < .01). This negative interaction effect suggests that for posts not contain-
ing a visual, the inclusion of private elements induces more audience engagement, while
there is no interaction effect present if the post contains a visual. In sum, it seems that poli-
ticians’ impression management via Facebook positively affect audience online engage-
ment, if politicians are willing to present themselves in a more emotional and intimate
fashion.

Conclusion and discussion

Social media fundamentally changed how politicians communicate to the public. Poli-
ticians do not only increasingly use online platforms to receive support in election
times (e.g., Gulati & Williams, 2007; Zittel, 2009), but today they are in a state of perma-
nent campaigning on the various social media channels available (e.g., Larsson, 2015,
2016). Drawing on our manual content analysis, this study is one of the first to scrutinize
the extent and effects of such self-personalization patterns on Facebook. Applying a com-
prehensive, conceptual model of different types of self-personalization, the study was able
to show that politicians frequently employ professional and emotional self-personaliza-
tion, and in turn, emotional and private self-personalization positively affect audience
engagement. This audience demand for more private impressions of public figures is in
line with a documented rise in journalism’s interest in the private life of politicians
(Ekman & Widholm, 2015) and reported positive outcomes of private self-personalization
strategies in experiments (e.g., Colliander et al., 2017; Meeks, 2017). However, expanding
previous findings, our study implies that audiences also strive for emotional self-presenta-
tions of politicians. Overall, we conclude that these softer self-personalization styles can be
beneficial tools in politicians’ impression management.
This study holds several theoretical and societal implications. First, it confirms that self-
personalization is a multi-layered concept on social media (Van Aelst et al., 2012; Van
Santen & Van Zoonen, 2010). The distinction between professional, emotional, and pri-
vate self-personalization provided an adequate framework for examining political perso-
nalization online. We found that all three types of self-personalization play an important
role in politicians’ social media performance. Still, the results revealed that it is valuable to
look at the extent and effects of each layer individually. Hereby, we detected a paradox: On
the one hand, professional self-personalization is one of the most used self-personalization
strategies online, while it does not exert any effect on audience engagement. On the other
hand, private self-personalization can positively stimulate audience engagement, but is
12 M. METZ ET AL.

rarely used. Future work should examine why emotional and private self-personalization
trigger audience engagement. One possibility may be that an increase in staged and pro-
fessionally created images online rises the demand for more natural images of politicians
as a counter-tactic (Enli, 2016). Thus, uploading a selfie of one’s morning run or speaking
from personal experience could contrast this highly professional environment by persuad-
ing audiences with authenticity (Enli & Skogerbø, 2013; Helms, 2012; Parry, 2015).
Second, as one of the first studies considering visual elements in politicians’ social
media use, this analysis shed light on the importance of visuals to promote personalized
communication styles. In the present sample, self-personalization was much more promi-
nently featured in posts including photos or videos, and this difference was present for all
three self-personalization types.
Last, it is important to consider regular terms of office more rigorously when discussing
personalization, as voters do not only evaluate politicians during the relatively short elec-
tion period, but also throughout their term of office (Giasson & Small, 2017). The study
has shown that self-personalization is much applied in regular government periods,
suggesting that self-personalization is more than an election campaign strategy.
Beside these theoretical and societal implications, our findings offer insights for political
marketers and politicians. Our analysis revealed that roughly 40% of the sample did not
offer a public Facebook account. These politicians miss out on the opportunity to gain
more control over their personal narratives. Several studies have shown that voters’ evalu-
ations of politicians’ characters impact their voting decisions (e.g., Funk, 1999; Hayes,
2005) and that also non-political character traits such as integrity play a role in the
decision-making process (e.g., Lavine & Gschwend, 2007; Olivola & Todorov, 2010). In
addition, recent political elections have highlighted the appeal of candidates such as Justin
Trudeau or Donald Trump who offer a more personal and ordinary and, therefore, auth-
entic image through social media (Enli, 2017; Lalancette & Raynauld, 2017). Taken
together, impression management via social media can help politicians to connect to citi-
zens on a more emotional and intimate level which may satisfy a growing demand for poli-
ticians to be ‘one of us’. Moreover, candidates perceived less newsworthy by traditional
media could benefit from the incorporation of social media by generating greater visibility
(Skovsgaard & Van Dalen, 2013). However, adapting to a rhetoric in which ‘style, looks
and visual performativity are central features’ (Ekman & Widholm, 2017) may also thrive
depoliticization. While many politicians today discuss and present their work on Facebook
sparking at least some debate about political issues, a shift towards more private and
emotional content could further prevent people from substantial political exchange in
the digital sphere. Still, self-personalization is an indispensable communication strategy
for politicians nowadays.

Limitations and suggestions for future research

It is important to keep in mind that the study did not explore communication content
beyond the type of self-personalization. Although the results promise positive effects
from the use of social media for political communication, one can expect that content
must fit the politician’s and party’s profile, be ethically correct and appealing in order to cre-
ate these effects. Hence, the relationship between actual (political) content and audience
engagement should be addressed in future research. Moreover, we direct future research
 INFORMATION, COMMUNICATION & SOCIETY 13

to examine self-personalization patterns beyond prominent politicians included in the pre-

sent, and most datasets on online personalization. One could expect that communication
patterns of second-row or local politicians diverge significantly from top politicians, who
may be less willing to share private information, given their greater exposure in the news
media (Van Aelst et al., 2017). In addition, we suggest looking at the present phenomenon
comparatively to detect potential similarities and differences across countries. Since pre-
vious research has stated that the use of social media in Germany is rather limited, our
findings could be the result of a more discreet German communication culture.
Last, although a personalized way of communication on social media potentially con-
tributes to a politician’s image, for most accounts it seems logical that the audience is lar-
gely composed of politically interested and even ideologically like-minded people. Thus,
we should be cautious not to overestimate the effects found in our analysis. Still, social
media provide a promising venue for politicians who intend to gain more control over
their narrative, as this study has shown.

Notes
1. It should be noted that although these studies clarify the conceptual definition of personali-
zation, they do not measure the actual use by examining the actual presence of these types of
personalization.
2. The political candidates placed on top of the party lists (rank 1).
3. ‘Landeslisten’ are tied to the second vote in the German electoral system. In each federal state,
political parties select and place candidates in order on these party lists. German voters then
vote for a party list in their respective federal state (‘Landeslisten’, n.d.).
4. 5 politicians had left parliament by the time of the data conduction; 2 politicians did not
make it to parliament in the 2013 elections; 18 politicians did either not have a Facebook
account or only a private account and 1 politician was excluded due to posting inactivity
in the study’s timeframe. In sum, 26 out of 64 politicians were excluded from the sample.
5. First, to identify the politicians visually, an image of each politician was included in the codebook.
Second, using several examples we illustrated how to code visual posts. For example, an emotional
expression in an image or video was defined as a visible emotion (e.g., strong laugh, cry).
6. The gold standard instead of the Lotus was reported because the first author of the study
embodies the main coder, thus the second coder is compared to the gold standard set by
the first coder.
7. A Chi-square test of independence was performed on the binary variable professional and
emotional self-personalization. The relationship is insignificant X 2 (1, N = 435) = 2.29, p = .130.
8. Bivariate correlations show that none of the three self-personalization levels correlate signifi-
cantly with each other, indicating that professional, emotional and private self-personaliza-
tion are distinct forms of self-personalization.
9. Sentiments, shares and comments are strongly correlated: Sentiments and shares (r = .81, p
< .001), sentiments and comments (r = .876, p < .001) and shares and comments (r = .65, p
< .001). Results present variables without natural logarithms.
10. For the party dummies, the SPD served as the reference category in the analyses.
11. The effects of Facebook likes are statistically significant, but very small.

Notes on contributors
Manon Metz is a PhD Student at the Department of Political Sociology at the University of Man-
nheim, Germany. Her research interests include online political communication, interpersonal
communication and political polarization [email: manon.metz@mzes.uni-mannheim.de].
14 M. METZ ET AL.

Sanne Kruikemeier is an Assistant Professor of Political Communication at the Amsterdam School

of Communication Research (ASCoR) at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Her
research focuses on the content and effects of online communication in a political context. Her
work has previously appeared in New Media & Society, the European Journal of Communication
and Computers in Human Behavior [email: S.Kruikemeier@uva.nl].
Sophie Lecheler is a Professor of Political Communication at the Department of Communication at
the University of Vienna, Austria. Her research interests include political communication, framing
theory, news media effects and digital journalism. Her work has been published in a range of inter-
national journals, such as Communication Research, Communication Theory, Journal of Communi-
cation and Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly [email: sophie.lecheler@univie.ac.at].

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID
Sophie Lecheler http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7320-1012

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