A Systematic Literature Review On The Influence Of Social Media In Political Communication

Abstract

This study aims to understand the effect of social media as political communication channel to make party leader more prominent than party itself. To understand the same, we have reviewed literature of different nations across the world from 2000 to 2022, with PRISMA four-phase data flow framework. We have defined specific criteria and search terms to identify the relevant studies which has discussed about influencing factors of social media in political landscape. Once identified, we found out key takeaways from all those studies, in terms of the influence of social media to make party leader more powerful than party itself. We found that in the last 15 years, the influence of social media (especially in large and economically well-off nations) as primary communication channel has grown significantly, and party leaders have gained competitive advantage than party itself, by reaching directly to the followers through social media.