Changing Dynamics of Political Party Communication: The Case of New Media in Bangladesh

Abstract Political parties are spending time, effort, and money on new media campaigns targeting users of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms. This trend has been observed in the context of elections in Bangladesh where, over the past couple of years, one of the most critical tools for political campaigns in national and local elections has been social media (predominantly Facebook). To explore this communication trend, this study aims to investigate political campaigns on social media during Bangladesh’s 11th national election held in December 2018. Even though the election result was controversial, electoral campaigns by the major political parties recorded significant use of social media to attract citizens, including the 20 million new voters. This study presents evidence from content analysis of the official Facebook pages of two major political alliances (led by the Bangladesh Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party), as well as from individual social media campaigns by candidates from these two parties, as it investigates the changing dynamics of political party communication in Bangladesh. The study also analyzes similarities and dissimilarities of new media campaigns by the different major political parties and the impacts of new media use on the political system and democratic profile of Bangladesh.