The digital party paradox: Behind participationism,the persistence of traditional political repertoires on Facebook

Abstract

This study examines how digital parties differ from traditional parties in their external political communication on Facebook during the French 2022 presidential election. Using a supervised machine learning method, we analysed posts (N = 17,060) published on the Facebook pages (N = 544) of French parties during the campaign. Our findings show that digital parties use Facebook intensively to mobilise their activist base, confirming their reliance on online participation. However, contrary to expectations, they do not structure their communication more around their party leader than traditional parties, nor do they systematically generate higher engagement levels. Instead, they grant greater autonomy to their members’ Facebook pages, particularly at the regional level, where activists adapt national campaign strategies to the local context. Finally, while digital parties use Facebook to amplify their candidate's media coverage, they rely less on diverse content formats such as videos and images, challenging previous assumptions about digital campaigning strategies.