Political branding of parties and leaders: A bibliometric clustered analysis of two decades

The current study systematically investigates the literature on political branding using a bibliometric clustered analysis. A synthesis of 17,811 research articles related to political advertising for political branding was developed using the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus databases. Bibliometric coupling was used to identify the most prestigious research publications, authors, universities, and research work to capture information about developing challenges and charting political advertising for political branding of parties and leaders’ research growth, enhancing advertising and branding literature. This led to the identification of three clusters dominating political branding and have scope for future research. These are (1) the communication medium (online and offline) used for political branding, (2) the role of technology in creating a persona and identity of the political leaders, and (3) political influencers' effectiveness in the success or failure of political branding campaigns, which would significantly affect the political branding literature.