POLITICAL NARRATIVES ON SOCIAL MEDIA DURING ELECTIONS: A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW

Abstract

Narratives can be understood as a story or a description of a series of events or a particular way of explaining or understanding events. Narratives play a significant role in clearly expressing values, ideals, and representative claims, distinguishing one’s identity for political purposes. The concept of political narrative has gained traction in public debates and academia in recent years with the evolution of digital technologies, especially after the advent of Web 2.0. Political actors—parties and leaders—have been using these platforms to engage with the masses. The engagement expands throughout the year including elections. The study in this background attempts a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) employing the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) technique using political narratives, social media, and election along with sub-keywords like electoral narrative, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and X, for advanced searches on three databases—Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. The time frame for study is 2005 to 2024. On the search results, various filters were applied to have a final total of 322 results, which include Scopus (155), Web of Science (48), and Google Scholar (119). The study then performed a screening of titles and abstracts and other steps in the PRISMA technique to select 102 literatures (articles, book chapters, conference papers) for carrying out a quantitative analysis. The study found most of the literature focusing and originating from American and European nations with least or literature from many Asian and African nations including India alongside mostly originating from discipline other than communication.