Politics and Leadership on Facebook During the 2012 Romanian Parliamentary Elections and the 2014 Euro-parliamentary Elections

This paper examines the communicational strategies used by Romanian politicians on Facebook in order to promote leadership values during the 2012 parliamentary elections and the 2014 euro-parliamentary campaign. In an era in which mass-media are commercialized, fragmented and lean towards infotainment, social media are a useful tool for politicians, where they can promote their own values and campaign topics, without following media logic. In this context, we should address the following question: to what extent online communication platforms are effectively used by politicians to interact with their followers? In the same time, to what extent do candidates use their controlled media space to promote values of political leadership, to legitimate political power or to mobilize voters? In order to study this subject, dispositive analysis was used, to reveal the way candidates interact with followers and the discursive techniques used to promote leadership. Results show that Romanian politicians do employ Facebook to promote leadership and to legitimate power, but Facebook isn’t used at its full potential in terms of web 2.0 features