The UK: The Post-Brexit, Ghost Election.

Abstract

In the context of the UK’s impending withdrawal from the European Union, we characterise the 2019 EU election in the UK as a ‘ghost campaign’, which did not have the attention of the major parties, let alone the voter. Such a backdrop may have invited parties to innovate or experiment with Facebook campaigning strategies, but the campaign was largely what one might expect in terms of the exploitation of the affordances of Facebook: cautious. Similarly, it followed the patterns of previous UK European Parliamentary elections by focusing largely on national and domestic politics with the parties offering persuasive communication intended to deliver them votes on election day. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Brexit dominated the topical focus of party Facebook posts.