Politico-Twitterial Tug of War: Analysis of Tweets Posted by Party Leaders during General Election-2018 Pakistan

Politico-Twitterial Tug of War: Analysis of Tweets Posted by Party Leaders during General Election-2018 Pakistan Abstract The advent of social media has initiated new opportunities for the promotion of democracy around the globe. Politicians use social media for the dissemination of their political agenda among the masses. Twitter is one of the most popular social media channels used by politicians for political purposes, such as, to interact with the public during election campaigns or routine political activities. In that context, this article examines the Tweets of mainstream leaders (Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Shehbaz Sharif, and Imran Khan) of three foremost political parties in Pakistan (Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) and Tahreek Insaf) respectively, who tweeted for election campaigns during General Elections-2018. The study also enfolds the campaign strategies, personal communication and prominent issues tweeted by the above-said leaders. The present study has selected and analyzed 570 Tweets posted by the above mentioned three leaders during the election month of July 2018. The collected tweets were analyzed by applying the Discourse Analysis method. Thus, the identified themes and sub-themes were discussed and interpreted according to the identified themes from the selected Tweets. It was found that the first most widely used strategy was the propagation of political information of campaign rallies. Second, a low-level of personalization was noticed in the tweets. Third, the three leaders highlighted the old and traditional issues of the countr