(Researching) Political Competition under Pressure

Political competition is a fundamental principle of democracy. In recent years, however, it has increasingly moved onto social media platforms, which shape it with their own specific logic. Consequently, the conditions of democratic competition may become systematically distorted. This is why researching political competition in platform environments is important, yet challenging. This talk addresses these constraints by providing insights into how SPARTA attempts to address some of these challenges. To provide an empirical illustration, the talk presents a cross-national and cross-platform study of the 2024 European Parliament election campaign. Using data on 401 parties across 27 EU member states and five platforms, the analysis distinguishes between party activity and audience support, and triangulates party type using EP group affiliation, expert-coded issue positions and populist traits. The results show that posting advantages are limited, while populist radical right actors receive disproportionately high levels of audience support, particularly on TikTok. Euroscepticism and emotional, anti-elitist communication are linked to higher engagement.