Political Advertising Campaigns on Social Media

<p>Social media has been widely used for political advertising campaigns over the past decade. Its growing significance has also drawn scholarly interest, yielding extensive yet dispersed research efforts. There is a noticeable lack of effort in reviewing this evolving area of research, which leads to a failure to identify avenues for future research. Guided by the PRISMA protocol and the Theories–Contexts–Methods (TCM) framework, this systematic review maps the research landscape and integrates the existing literature by exploring the theories, contexts, and methods covered by ninety-nine studies on political advertising campaigns on social media over the last fifteen years (2011–2025). As its primary scientific contribution, this study moves beyond a descriptive summary to serve as an integrative and agenda-setting review, providing a comprehensive research map and a cross-theoretical synthesis of the fragmented literature. This review reveals the dominance of single-theory approaches, identifying twelve distinct theories. Furthermore, the current review emphasizes the contexts of elections, sexism, and social movements in various countries. The review also reveals the prevalent adoption of qualitative approaches and the lack of mixed and conceptual methodologies. It provides an overview of the research field, establishes evidence-based future research avenues within the TCM framework, and offers operational insights for practitioners.</p>