Os social media e o marketing político em Portugal

: a utilização do Facebook e do Twitter pelas principais forças políticas durante as Eleições Legislativas Portuguesas de 2011

Abstract

Recently, the development of the Internet and the creation of a set of tools that have emerged with the so-called Web 2.0 - blogs, social networks, podcasts, content communities, wikis, etc. - have taken the online interaction and involvement between individuals to an unprecedented scale. Some other factors also contributed to this phenomenon as the popularization of the Internet, the cheaper communications and the development of mobile and wireless technologies. In the meantime, political institutions invested increasingly in Political Marketing, seeking to define coherent strategies and long-term approaches to citizens. If in the recent past the political parties relied mainly on traditional offline media, these institutions are increasingly using the online tools, particularly the Social Media. As Qualman stated (2008), due to the ability to achieve effective large sections of the population, Social Media has become a very important marketing strategy for individuals, businesses and organizations of any size. Resulting from this increased use, there are some questions related with how to measure the effectiveness of these tools. This case study aims to do an analysis on how the main Portuguese political organizations are using the Social Media. To focus this analysis, we selected two worldwide success tools - Facebook and Twitter - and the five major party organizations with representation in the Portuguese Parliament (PS, PSD, CDS / PP, CDU and BE) and the Presidency of the Portuguese Republic. Then, we selected a set of dimensions related with the Social Media metrics. Based on this study, we conclude that the use of Social Media tools is not uniform among all the entities and that there are some areas to improve, especially to enhance greater interaction and effective engagement with citizens.

Date of Award	7 Dec 2011
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	António Andrade (Supervisor)