The pervasive power of social media logics? Personalized communication styles in Swiss direct democratic campaigns

Social media platforms have become an integral part of today’s political communication, affecting various aspects of individual and organizational practices and structures within digital and non-digital spaces. Building on mediatization theory, scholars argue that the distinct logics governing the platforms spread across institutional boundaries and incentivize political actors to embrace adaptive strategies in the digital sphere and beyond. Specifically, the like-economy and popularity principle of social media logic (van Dijck & Poell, 2013) motivate political actors to engage in more personalized communication styles, thereby possibly reinforcing existing norms and processes that are placing greater emphasis on individuals at the expense of social groups and political parties. This study examines the potentially pervasive power of social media logic, and in particular the adaptation to more personalized communication styles in a direct democratic context, exploring how social media logic affects political communication practices and perceptions in a least-likely-case. For this purpose, this study pursues two empirical approaches: first, it analyzes how campaign staff perceive and employ personalized communication styles in Swiss direct democratic votes based on interview data collected in 2023. Second, to investigate how the potentially pervasive power of social media logic, indicated by the diffusion of its norms across institutional boundaries, influences communication practices in non-digital spaces, this study uses content analysis to analyze whether the appearance of faces at the expense of political groups in newspaper ads of one (or two) newspapers has increased over time, and particularly after social media use became more widespread in Swiss direct democratic campaigns. Thereby, this study contributes to the existing literature in two ways: first, by investigating the little researched relationship between social media logic and processes of personalization in digital and non-digital spaces, and second, by exploring the potentially pervasive power of social media logic in the least-likely- case of Switzerland with its distinct institutional setting and political culture.