Introduction
Social media represent a powerful tool allowing politicians to convey their messages directly to a broad auditory of citizens. Voters, in their turn, get a virtual window to observe the political world from their candidates’ perspectives. Therefore, politicians obtain an opportunity to create their individualized narratives of political reality tailored to serve their needs: present powerful images of themselves to attract as many supporters as possible and establish strong and sustainable connections with them.
Analysis of Jeff Fortenberry’s Facebook posts and Tweets
According to the information provided on Nebraska Government’s webpage (2021), Jeff Fortenberry serves Nebraska’s First Congressional District. He focuses on support for families and communities and works for the House Appropriations Committee and the Energy and Water, Agriculture, and Military Construction and Veterans Affairs subcommittees. Previously, Fortenberry operated with concerns related to Middle Eastern affairs, human rights concerns, nuclear weapons non-proliferation, and agricultural entrepreneurship (Nebraska Government, 2021). Jeff Fortenberry has his personal accounts on Facebook and Twitter.
The analysis of Jeff Fortenberry’s Facebook posts and tweets includes the period of August 2021. August 10 to August 14: Fortenberry is focused on the devastating consequences of illegal immigrants’ passing the borders and hardships of the Border Patrol (Fortenberry, n.d.a; Fortenberry, n.d.b). August 5, 11, and 19 (Fortenberry, n.d.a) and August 5, 12, and 20 (Fortenberry, n.d.b): Fortenberry emphasizes the importance of local businesses’ prosperity, promotes loans and other measures of support for them. August 5 (Fortenberry, n.d.a; Fortenberry, n.d.b): the discussion of the dysfunctional relationship with China. The perspectives on the range of issues that Fortenberry promotes on Facebook and Twitter go in line with the positions of the Republican Party.
The differences between the posts on Facebook and tweets stem from the unique features of these platforms. Twitter is primarily used to distribute professionally relevant information concisely and elaborately (Ernst et al., 2017). Facebook fosters to enhance commitment, intensiveness, and proximity of people’s communication. In comparison to Twitter, Facebook seems to be more socially mixed and widespread (Ernst et al., 2017).
Fortenberry posts the same information on both platforms. The main difference between these accounts is the number of followers, comments, reposts, and likes: 21,7 thousand followers on Facebook compared to 24,6 thousand on Twitter, show themselves more active in commenting, liking, and sharing. Hence, Fortenberry’s voters prefer to interact with him on Facebook rather than on Twitter.
Possible Alterations for the Engagement of Moderate Voters
It is crucial to characterize moderate voters to provide effective recommendations for candidates intending to win their approval. Compared to non-moderate voters, moderates rarely consider their candidates’ ideological positions (Adams et al., 2017).
It is rational to suppose that centrist voters prefer more centrist politics, but it was not proved in practice as the general rule. Adams et al. (2017) note that today the polarization between political elites is growing as they realized that their opposing positions do not repel moderate voters. Research shows that centrists are generally less knowledgeable of political events and more willing to engage in discussions that require relatively low levels of information (Adams et al., 2017). Therefore, it is more useful to consider general marketing measures to make a politician’s account more appealing to such a target auditory.
First of all, politicians could use a conversational tone and directly address their voters. The perception of interactivity is valuable in improving voters’ attitudes towards a candidate (McLaughlin & MacAfee, 2019). Fortenberry’s style of writing is official and detached. However, when he posts videos of his conversations with local citizens, they seem more emotional and personal. The illusion of having a close relationship with a media character, i.e., parasocial relationship, is the key to winning peoples’ votes. Hence, Fortenberry could sometimes politely respond to people’s comments or share their reactions commenting on them.
In addition, social media could be used to tell the absorbing stories of political fights. This method promotes the voters’ engagement in political action and makes people associate themselves with the followed media figure (McLaughlin & MacAfee, 2019). For example, in the posts of August 5 (Fortenberry, n.d.a) and August 6, Fortenberry presents the initiative to address the increasing price of insulin (Fortenberry, n.d.b). In the following posts, Fortenberry could narrate his struggle in a more detailed and engaging way because the experience of compassion leads to increasing interest in projects’ realizations.
Another working strategy to win voters is to utilize a balancing of back-stage and front-stage performances. According to Colliander et al. (2017), it is beneficial to mix front-stage professional public image with back-stage informal insides. Fortenberry posts only his “front-stage” moments, but he could share his interests and hobbies, talk about his family, friends, or colleagues in more informal language. Revealing interesting aspects of a politician’s private life could also boost public interest in his professional activity.
Conclusion
Social media give a fascinating opportunity for politicians to spread their messages effectively without the intervention of mediators filtering or distorting the information. Congressman Jeff Fortenberry utilizes such an opportunity on his Facebook and Twitter accounts, talking his auditory about his attitude to political and social events, actions, and initiatives. Fortenberry’s tweets and posts show that he promotes the positions of the Republican Party.
Fortenberry is always polite and informative, but he could apply marketing strategies to appeal to more moderate voters. He should try using a conversational tone, be more emotional in his narratives of political events, and share some interesting private information to show the “back-stage” of his professional activity. These recommendations assume that positive emotions and openness are factors resulting in voters’ desire to show their political engagement. In that way, auditory naturally sympathizes with narrators and embraces their goals.
References
Adams, J., Engstrom, E., Joeston, D., Stone, W., Rogowski, J., & Shor, B. (2017). Do moderate voters weigh candidates’ ideologies? Voters’ decision rules in the 2010 congressional elections. Political Behavior, 39(1), 205-227. Web.
Colliander, J., Marder, B., Falkman, L. L., Madestam, J., Modig, E., & Sagfossen, S. (2017). The social media balancing act: Testing the use of a balanced self-presentation strategy for politicians using Twitter. Computers in Human Behavior, 74, 277-285. Web.
Ernst, N., Engesser, S., Büchel, F., Blassnig, S., & Esser, F. (2017). Extreme parties and populism: an analysis of Facebook and Twitter across six countries. Information, Communication & Society, 20(9), 1347-1364. Web.
Fortenberry, J. (n.d.a). Home. Facebook. Web.
Fortenberry, J. [@JeffFortenberry]. (n.d.b). Tweets & replies. Twitter. Web.
McLaughlin, B., & MacAfee, T. (2019). Becoming a presidential candidate: Social media following and politician identification. Mass Communication and Society, 22(5), 584-603. Web.
Nebraska Government. (2021). Federal Government. Web.