Clicking Responses on Social Media: Analysis of Audience Engagement on Posts and Tweets of MNAs of Pakistan

Savera Shami

Some scholars strongly believe that digital public relations through

Social Media is the most emerging form worldwide and it is the

future of Political Public Relations. Many scholars have supported

the idea that the politicians are using social media to build their

political image and are not doing much to create a relationship and

discourse with their voters. This also strengthen the prevailing idea

that regardless of the potential advantages, politicians tend to

hesitate the active involvement of online users (Hoffmann and

Suphan, 2017).The primary goal of this study is to explore a

relationship between the posts and tweets of the Members of

National Assembly of Pakistan (MNAs) and the audience

involvement by investigating the type of Facebook posts and

tweets that generate more audience engagement. The analysis of

audience engagement would help politicians to know what they

should post and what should be avoided if they want to have more

followers and cultivate a lifelong relationship with their audience.

Introduction

Over the last 10 years there has been an enormous increase in the

importance of new technology and hence, the exploration has amplified tenfold.

Some scholars strongly believe that digital public relations through Social Media is

the most emerging form worldwide and it is the future of Political Public Relations.

Social Media has changed the conditions and rules of social interaction. The

dialogical, interactive and relational global properties of digital media have forced

public relations practitioners to abandon their traditional one-way, message-

oriented, asymmetrical and ethnocentric paradigm of practice (Grunig, 2009)).

Since social media stimulates two-way communication, it gives an opportunity to

build-up a dialogue with a larger audience, social media offers possibilities to

cultivate and maintain relationships to the users. The existing literature shows that

politicians, like others, have also been using social media for the purpose of PR and

political communication. Social Media tools are now considered to be extremely

effective means of self-publicity and promotion.Being a direct channel of

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communication, Social Media is making it easier for politicians to bypass the

heavily mediated connections offered by traditional media (Hallahan, Holtzhausen,

Van Ruler, Verčič, & Sriramesh, 2007) and to “draw the public’s attention”

(Broersma and Graham, 2012) to the issues of their own choice;thereby

empowering the politicians and giving them an opportunity to cultivate the

relationship with the audience through direct communication. It is said that

communication is the spine of political strategy and public relations. Newer

platforms like Facebook and Twitter have made this more flexible, they have

provided new avenues for politicians, including personalized messages and

exchange with the specific communities of interest. Facebook posts and Twitter

feeds have the power to rotate the whole political mood in an upside notation

(Frame and Brochette, 2015). These newer platforms have also given access to

political leaders to personalize their profiles and bring forward information and

shed light on their own views that have the capacity to change the opinion of

masses. That is why, now widespread adoption of social media is challenging the

way traditional media have been used to disseminate news and to debate on most

important social and political issues (Yang, Chen, Maity, & Ferrara, 2016).

The politicians and citizens link and communicate on social media, boost

digital engagement through likes, shares and comments that increase their visibility

in public. The politicians are using social media and posting the content of their

own choice with the intention to form the public opinion and sometimes to lead and

direct the discussion. Most of the literature demonstrate that the central purpose of

political public relations is to consume media channels to convey specific political

issues in order to gain public support for political policies (Froehlich and Rüdiger,

2006). But on the contrary, it has also been observed that states people are

engrossed with their political image and not concerned much about engaging in a

discourse with their voters (Momoc, 2013), while the social media idealists believe

that digital political public relations infer huge involvement of the consumers,

means the audience. Many scholars have supported the idea that the politicians are

using social media to build their political image and are not doing much to create a

relationship and discourse with their votes. This also strengthen the prevailing idea

that regardless of the potential advantages, politicians tend to hesitate the active

involvement of online users (Hoffmann and Suphan, 2017). The internet has

become an increasingly effective tool for the people to not only get political

knowledge, but to become a part of political process itself but unfortunately

communicators tend to use new media in the same way they used the old media

(Grunig, 2009).

In this scenario, various scholars have suggested that it is imperative to

study that how elected representatives present themselves to their voters in order to

increase their chances of getting elected again (Koop and Marland (2012).

According to Taylor and Kent (2010) the scholarship in public relations and social

media should spread onto more important issues as most of the attention of the

research has been to study technology interfaces (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), instead

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of subjects involving shareholders, publics, communication, interpersonal issues

etc. In many cases it has been observed that they don’t respond to the audience on

Social Media, thus involving themselves in one-way communication, undermining

the scope of Social Media. If the politicians are interested in generating more

audience and gain social capital, then they must be aware of the fact that what type

of posts and tweets are more liked and shared by the audience. The primary goal of

this study is to explore a relationship between the posts and tweets of the Pakistani

MNAs and the audience involvement by investigating the type of Facebook posts

and tweets that generate more audience engagement. The analysis of audience

engagement would help the politicians to know what they should post and what

should be avoided if they want to have more followers and cultivate a life long

relationship with their audience. Therefore, the primary objective of this study is to

explore the level of audience engagement across different purpose, nature and

language of posts or tweets of MNAs which would help in analysing their

relationship cultivation strategy.

1.1. Research Questions

In the light of the literature studied, the following research question have been

formulated:

R.Q.1. Does level of audience engagement differ across different purpose of posts

and tweets of MNAS of Pakistan?

R.Q.2. Does level of audience engagement differ across different PR tactics of

posts and tweets of MNAS of Pakistan?

R.Q.3. Does level of audience engagement differ across language of posts and

tweets of MNAS of Pakistan?

Relationship Cultivation and Management: Review of Literature

The audience engagement reflects the relationship cultivation strategy of

users, as more audience engagement means better relationship and less audience

engagement means not so good relationship with the audience. There are not much

studies on Relationship Cultivation and Management, Karlsson, Clerwall and

Buskqvist (2013) stated that there aren't sufficient studies done on relationship

management in digital political public relations. The authors investigated whether

political parties are utilizing the digital media platform for long-term commitment

and reciprocity using the 2010 Swedish campaign election as a case study. The

result indicates that social media tools are mainly used at the time of the election

and just before that, it was observed that the exchange between the parties and the

voters is weak and insubstantial. There were some differences in frequency of use,

but all parties shared the same activity pattern. The aggregated predictive model

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classified retweeting behavior with a success rate of 76.7%. The number of

followers of the one originating the tweet matters significantly in retweeting

behavior and when the emotion of the tweet is negative it appears to be retweeted

more which is quite the opposite of the previous work (East, Hammond, & Wright,

2007; Wu, 2013). In addition, certain types of tweet content are associated with

very low level retweeting, such as tweets including the originator’s personal life,

whereas the content related to fear appeals or expressions support for others also

get high levels of retweeting. Furthermore, Hoffmann and Suphan (2017) explained

the significance of social media and how it provided new avenues for politicians,

including personalized messages and exchange with the specific communities of

interest. However, regardless of the potential advantages, politicians tend to

hesitate an active involvement of online users. In this scholarship the author studied

the influence and impact of politicians' online boundary management on the use of

social platforms. The connections made by social media profiles could be

entrenched in diversity of social backgrounds ("Contextual collapse"). Professional

communicators faced difficulties in the management of the division between the

professional and the private online self-presentation.

In addition to this, Stanyer (2008) talks about the image politicians create

of themselves to their voters using the Internet. The article talks about various

methods used by the serving study of 106 German parliamentarians, the author

explained the four different types of boundary management schemes and analyzes

the effect of these on the social media usage of politicians to better understand

politicians' online engagement and government officials online self-publicity.

Similarly, Seltzer and Zhang (2010) surveyed the relationship that citizens have

with their political parties, using 2008 presidential general election as a case study.

The author used the telephone survey method to collect data of listed voters (n 1⁄4 508), and he examined the communication between politically significant

connection predecessors, relationship- farming tactics employed by political parties

and results of the relationship to test a model of political organization- public

relationships (POPRs). Time, interpersonal trust, mediated communication,

interpersonal communication, and dialogic communication emerged as significant

predictors of POPR strength. The finding put the groundwork for future

investigation of POPRs.

The review of the existing literature has identified numerous research gaps

and unexplored research areas that are worthy of investigation. So far, many studies

have discussed the importance and significance of social media for political

communication and political public relation but there are not many studies

available which examined the use of social media by the political actors in context

of relationship cultivation and reputation management strategies. Therefore, the

review of the literature mentioned here provides the basis for the research questions

being explored in the study. This study is focused to explore the type of posts and

tweets of MNAs which are getting more audience engagement in order to analyse

the quality of the relationship cultivated with the audience.

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3.0. Relationship Cultivation Theory: Conceptual Framework

As this research is based on the analysis of relationship cultivation strategy

of MNAs through audience engagement so the conceptual framework of this

research is revolved around Relationship Cultivation Theory, developed in the

context of public relations. Organizational study has demonstrated that any

organization’s behavior can affect the status of its relationship with the strategic

publics. Organizations cannot merely maintain relationships with the publics, but

must devote time and resources to improve their relationships and/or restore any

damaged relationships. To properly cultivate relationships with their strategic

publics or stakeholders, organizations/persons can integrate a range of relationship

cultivation tactics into their day-to-day communication activities.

Relationship cultivation strategies originated from theories of interpersonal

relations (Canary & Stafford, 1994) specifically romantic relationships (Stafford,

Dainton & Hass, 2000). Public relation researchers (e.g., Grunig & Huang, 2000)

“transformed the concept of relationship cultivation strategies in interpersonal

communication and applied the strategies to Public Relations” (Hon & Grunig,

1999). Relationship cultivation tactics are day-to-day communication activities

employed by organization/persons to improve the quality of its relationships with

various publics or stakeholders and are often considered proactive approaches to

fostering high quality relationships. From a general standpoint of Public Relations,

Hon and Grange (1999) introduced five indicators that are commitment,

satisfaction, relationship quality, trust and control mutuality. The most effective

strategies, which have been identified to produce positive relationship outcomes

(Grunig & Huang, 2000), are “access, positivity, openness, sharing tasks,

networking, and assurances” (Hung-Baesecke & Chen, 2013; Ki & Hon, 2009). In

a study of the 2008 U.S. presidential election, Seltzer and Zhang (2010) explored

“the impact of the relationship maintenance strategies of mediated communication,

social activities, interpersonal communication, and online communication

relationship quality with political parties along the dimensions of trust, satisfaction,

commitment, control mutuality, and supportive behaviors”. Ledingham (2011) also

identified the indicators of trust, openness, satisfaction, access, mutual control, and

responsiveness as arguably the most critical in determining relationship quality in a

political public relations setting. It is worth recognizing that this approach goes

beyond defining political public relations as communication to include actions and

behaviors.

Regardless of the scales development to measure the relationship

cultivation plans, a few researches have been conducted to investigate how

organizations integrate these relationship maintenance policies into their visibility

on internet, particularly for religions networks. The viewpoint of relationship

management argues that the major objective of public relations practitioners is to

develop, maintain, and endorse long-term rapport between an organization and

stakeholders, no matter who they are. This dimension is an important exit from

exploitation of public views to the unification of ethical and balanced two-way

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communication. Though, it was not an easily embraced standpoint, public relation

scholars took almost 15 years to accept this concept. This developing model has

made substantial interest among the academic and professional groups because of

the emphasis on relationship management. Broom, Casey and Ritchey (2000)

added that public relations practitioners accept this new dimension to the extent

that now the field is known as relationship management rather than strategic

communications.

Relationship management is not a part of public relations only because it

has been comprehensively combined with the programs of corporate and integrated

marketing communications. Morgan and Hunt (1994) defines the notions of

building trust and pledge with target public. According to Parasuraman, Zeithaml

and Berry (1988), one of the first attempts to check the level of relationships is the

SERVQUAL scales from marketing discipline. These scales quantityor quantifythe

statements presented to stakeholders’ reservations and the party’s tilt to support or

reject them. Keep the introduction of these scales in view, Bull (2003) argued that

relationship management scholars proposed investigation of different aspects of the

public relationship from leadership and culture (Eagle & Kitchen, 2000) to message

construction (Duncan & Moriarity, 1998) and interactivity (Grönroos, 2004). All of

these features affect the cultivation and maintenance of organizational relationships

with public. Tilson and Venkateswaran (2006) restated that “devotional-

promotional communication’ and added “aims to establish and maintain good

clergy–congregant/ devotee relations as well as inspire devotion to the faith” (p.

115). Despite the availability of the wide range of communication channels,

organizations build relationships with target audience in similar patterns reflected

by the process of relationship development between two persons.

Following a quick idea of cultivation plans by Hon and Grunig (1999),

asked for supplementary investigations of relationship management and complete

explanation of the face to face approaches that might be applied to the

organizational contexts. This perspective of Dialogic Theory (Kent and Taylor,

2002) is accustomed with the prevailing thoughts on the function of

communication in making relationships, where these constructive relationships

between an organization and its shareholders are built through communication with

the help of public relation practitioners (Ledingham, 2003). One exclusive

advantage of using social media networks in public relations practitioners is their

ability to involve many citizens in two-way communication even in the low budget

structure (Duggan, 2013). In addition, Bruning (2002) stated that “To effectively

manage relationships, it is critical that practitioners conceptualize of

communication with key public members (rather than simply a transfer of

information), and use communication to support an ongoing relationship”.

As Relationship Cultivation Strategy is a part of public relations and this

study is focused on the relationship cultivated by MNAs of Pakistan with their

audience by analyzing the shares, likes and comments on their Facebook posts as

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well as retweets, replies and likes on the tweets, thus relationship cultivation

strategy provides an ideal framework for this study. Like many other researches,

this research does not aim to develop or follow any scale to measure the

relationship cultivation plan. This study has been conducted to investigate how

MNAs integrate the relationship cultivation strategy to enhance visibility and

popularity on Social Media because MNAs need to develop, maintain, and endorse

long-term rapport between them and their audience to increase their social capital

and achieve political objectives.

Research Methodology

The main objective of this study is to examine the audience reaction on the

Facebook posts and tweets of MNAs of Pakistan. For this purpose, the Facebook

pages and Twitter accounts of 34 MNAs are selected through multi-stage sampling.

The data was gathered about the official accounts from National Assembly’s

Speaker office to avoid the possibility of selecting someone’s fake account.

According to the list given, initially 84 members stated that they use both Facebook

and Twitter, afterwards when Facebook pages and Twitter accounts of 84 members

were opened, it was found out that many of them were not active users. So, 40 out

of 84 were selected but at the end this number was confined to 34 because six

political actors didn’t allow to collect data from their Facebook and Twitter

accounts.

To investigate that what type of posts and tweets generated more number

of comments, shares, likes and replies, the reaction on every post and tweet, posted

during November, 2016 is analyzed. In order to measure the audience engagement,

the content analysis of posts and tweets was also done as a primary study to divide

them into three categories based on purpose, language and PR tactic. These three

categories are further divided into sub-categories which are as follows:

i. Purpose: (Political, Personal, Educate the Audience, Call for Action,

Response on any Issue)

ii. PR Tactic: (Self-Promotion, Party Promotion, Opponents Attack,

Self-Promotion + Opponent Attack)

iii. Language: (Insulting, Appreciation for Self, Appreciation for Others,

Critical) The audience engagement is further divided into following categories:

Category Sub Category

Audience engagement Likes, Shares, Comments (Facebook)

Replies, Retweets, Likes (Twitter)

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Moreover, this study is focused on a non-election time and the selected

month was almost in the middle of the previous five-year democratic regime (2013-

2018), this was a time whenMNAs were not much preparing for elections and

using Facebook and Twitter to share content about their daily routines and

activities.

The two coders were trained to code the data, they were guided about the

categories and indicators. The reliability was checked statistically after pilot study

and Cronbach's Alpha was 0.9, which was more than 0.7.

5.0. Findings & Discussion

One of the basic objective of this study is to look at the level of audience

engagement in order to investigate the type of posts that generate more comments,

likes and shares and the type of tweets that generate more retweets, likes and

replies. Thus, the results and findings deal with the audience engagement including

likes, shares and comments on Facebook posts and likes, replies and retweets on

Tweets. The Kruskal Wallis test is applied to measure the highest ranks and the

significant difference in level of audience engagement across purpose, language

and PR tactic.

5.1. Level of Audience Engagement across purpose of using Facebook and

Twitter

Figure 1: Level of Likes on Facebook and Twitter Across Different Purpose As far as Facebook likes are concerned, the test results in Figure 1 show

that there is a significant difference in the level of Facebook likes across the

different purpose categories, χ2(4) =16.594, p = 0.002 which is less than .05. With

this significant difference, the highest mean rank is for call of action, which means

that the audience like the posts most in which MNAs have asked to follow them or

their party and take some practical step, e.g. voting for the party or to attend some

rally. At second number the audience like the posts which tend to educate the

audience about any development or give any information to make people aware.

The posts related to the political activities of MNAs have third highest mean rank,

010002000

Personal Political Educate Call for

Action

Response on

Some Issue

Likes

Likes Across Purpose

Mean Rank Facebook Mean Rank Twitter

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then comes personal posts and lowest rank is for posts which contain response on

some issue by MNAs. In case of Twitter, the test shows that there is a significant

difference in the level of likes on tweets across the different purpose categories,

χ2(4) =22.641, p = 0.000, with the highest mean rank for call for action, second highest for response on some issue, at third place people like the tweets which are

meant to educate the audience, interestingly political tweets stand at fourth place

and lowest mean rank is for tweets containing personal content. The graph shown

in Figure1, clearly reflects that the audience engagement is not much different on

both the platforms, on Facebook, the audience like posts which have some call for

action and same is the situation on Twitter, this may strengthen the observation that

Facebook and Twitter can be perfect platforms to motivate the audience, so MNAs

must use these platforms if they want the audience to take some desirable

action.Another point, needs to be mentioned here is that overall the audience

engagement is higher on Twitter as compared to Facebook. A notion already

discussed in various studies that twitter is more ideal vehicle for self promotion,

proves correct here too and it can be inferred that the audience prefer Twitter on

Facebook to connect with MNAs. There is a clear difference in likes on the posts

and tweets to give some response on any issue, means the audience also want

MNAs to use Twitter if they want to clarify or respond to anything,may be that is

considered more official, whereas Facebook is considered more of a personal

platform. It can be observed from the findings that the respondents are more

interested in education posts rather than political or any other type. This can also

challenge the well-established fact that producers produce what consumers want;

no such link is established here. The producers (MNAs) are producing more

political content which they want to share with the public irrespective of the fact

that what the consumers (audience) want to read and share.

Figure 2: Level of Shares and Retweets Across Different Purpose

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Personal Political Educate Call for Action Response on

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Shares/Retweets Across Purpose

Mean Rank Facebook Mean Rank Twitter

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Furthermore, the test result shows that there is no substantial difference in the

level of Facebook shares across the different purpose categories, χ2(4) =13.526, p =

0.009. The highest mean rank of shares goes to educate the audience, second

highest mean rank is for call of action, posts related to political activities get third

highest mean rank then comes response on some issue and lowest share is of

personal posts (Figure 2), which means people don’t share much of the personal

posts of MNAs which makes a lot of sense. Here also, to educate the audience has

the highest mean rank, which demonstrates that education posts are shared more on

Facebook as compared to the other types of posts.As far as retweets are concerned,

the test shows that there is a significant difference in the level of retweets across

the different purpose categories, χ2(4) =73.203, p = 0.000 which is less than .05, with a highest mean rank for call of action, second highest for response on some

issue and the third place is for the tweets which aim to educate the audience.

Interestingly, tweets based on the political activities of the MNA are shared much

less and lowest mean rank is for personal tweets.

Figure 3: Level of Comments and Replies Across Different Purpose

According to the results shown in figure 3, there is no significant

difference in the level of Facebook comments across the different purpose

categories, χ2(4) =11.72, p = 0.20. According to the graph highest mean rank is for,

to educate the audience, interestingly here the political posts have second highest

mean rank means people like to comment on these posts more than personal, call

for action and the tweets containing response on some issue by MNAs. Thenceforth

come the replies, the test pointed out a major difference in the level of Twitter

replies across the different purpose categories, χ2(4) =47.46, p = 0.000, with a highest mean rank for call for action, second highest mean rank for response on

some issue, third highest mean rank is for political tweets, means audience don’t

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Personal Political Educate Call for Action Response on

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Comment/ Replies

Comments and Replies Across Purpose

Mean Rank Facebook Mean Rank Twitter

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reply on the political tweets much whereas comments on political posts on

Facebook has second highest mean rank. Fourth highest mean rank is for tweets

having personal content and lowest mean rank is for the tweets which are aimed to

spread some education and awareness related content.

Above are the results of audience engagement and the language used in the

comments on the posts and tweets.

Level of Audience Engagement Across PR Tactic Through Facebook and

Twitter

Figure 4: Level of Likes Across PR Tactic

There is also a significant difference in the level of Facebook likes across

PR tactic, χ2(3) =53.612, p = 0.000, which is less than .05 with a highest mean rank

for self-promotion + opponent attack, at second place are the posts for self-

promotion, third highest mean rank is for opponent attack and the lowest mean

rank is for party promotion. Interestingly, self-promotion + opponent attack has the

highest mean rank, means these posts were liked most by the audience. The result

of Kruskal Wallis test shown in Figure 4 explains a significant difference in the

level of likes on Tweets across the PR Tactic for image building, χ2(3) =74.970, p = 0.000, which is less than .05, with a highest mean rank for party promotion,

second highest for self-promotion + opponent attack, third place is for opponent

attack and lowest mean rank is of self-promotion. Interesting to observe here that

the highest mean rank goes to party promotion.

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Self-Promotion Party Promotion Opponent Attack Self-Promotion

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likes

Likes Across PR Tactic

Mean Rank Facebbook Mean Twitter

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Figure 5: Level of Shares and Retweets Across PR Tactic

In addition to this, according to the findings in figure 5, there a significant

difference in the level of Facebook shares across the PR tactics used for image

building, χ2(3) =34.099, p = 0.000, which is less than .05 with a highest mean rank

of for self-promotion + opponent attack, second highest number of posts shared

contain the content to attack or degrade, thethird highest mean rank is for self-

promotion and lowest mean rank is for party promotion. Here, also, the highest

mean rank is of self-promotion + opponent attack which shows that this type of

posts are shared most by the audience on Facebook. As far as Twitter is concerned,

according to the results, the test presents a noteworthy difference in level of

retweets across image building, χ2(3) =122.082, p = 0.000, which is less than .05 with a highest mean rank for self-promotion + opponent attack, second highest

mean rank for party promotion, opponent attack is at third place whereas lowest

mean rank is of self-promotion. Interestingly, the most retweeted tweets by the

audience are related to self-promotion + opponent attack.

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Self-Promotion Party Promotion Opponent Attack Self-Promotion

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Shares and Retweets Across PR Tactic

Mean Rank Facebbook Mean Twitter

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Figure 6: Level of Comments and Replies Across Different PR Tactic

There is also a significant difference in the level of Facebook comments

across PR tactic, χ2(3) =53.612, p = 0.000, which is less than .05 with a highest

mean rank for self-promotion + opponent attack, at second place are the posts for

self-promotion, third highest mean rank is for opponent attack and the lowest mean

rank is for party promotion (Figure 6). Interestingly, self-promotion + opponent

attack has the highest mean rank, means these posts have highest number of

comments by the audience. The result of Kruskal Wallis test shown in Figure 6

explains a significant difference in the level of replies on Tweets across the PR

Tactic, χ2(3) =74.970, p = 0.000, which is less than .05, with a highest mean rank for party promotion, second highest for self-promotion + opponent attack, third

place is for opponent attack and lowest mean rank is of self-promotion. Interesting

to observe here that the highest mean rank goes to party promotion.These results

show that the audience are more interested in the posts and tweets in which MNAs

are promoting their positive self and negative others.

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Self –Promotion Party Promotion Opponent Attack Self- Promotion +

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5.3. Level of Audience Engagement Differ Across Language used on Facebook

and Twitter

Figure 7: Level of Likes Across Language

The test shows that there is a significant difference in the level of Facebook

likes across the language used, χ2(4) =205.505, p = 0.000, which is less than .05 with a highest mean rank of posts using insulting language for others, then self-

appreciation followed by the posts having appreciative language for others, then

comes sarcastic and the lowest mean rank is of criticism on others (Figure7). In this

graph again insulting language for others has the highest mean rank, which

suggests that the most of the audience like the tweets that contain insulting

language. The results show that the posts with insulting language for others get

highest shares, likes and comments which means that these posts generated highest

audience engagement. As far as Twitter is concerned, there is a major difference in

the level of likes across the different language categories, χ2 (5) =16.239, p = 0.006, with a highest mean rank for appreciation for others, then the tweets

criticising others followed by sarcastic/taunting language. Fourth highest mean

rank is for appreciation for self and the lowest mean rank is of the tweets using

insulting language for others.

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Figure 8: Level of Shares and Retweets Across Language

A Kruskal Wallis test is applied to test the difference of level of audience

engagement across language used in Facebook posts (Figure 8), and the test

displays that there is a significant difference in the level of Facebook shares across

the language used, χ2(4) =138.471, p = 0.000, which is less than .05 with a highest mean rank score for insulting for others, second highest for self-appreciation, at

third place is appreciation for others followed by sarcastic and the criticism on

others which have the lowest mean rank. In the graph the insulting language for

others has the highest mean rank, explaining that posts with insulting language for

others get the highest shares. As per the result, there is a ssubstantial difference in

the level of retweets across the different Language categories, χ2(5) =35.648, p = 0.000 with highest mean rank for appreciation for others, second highest mean rank

is of criticism on others followed by the tweets containing sarcastic/taunting

language, and the appreciation for self. Lowest mean rank is of the tweets

containing insulting language for others.

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Shares/Retweets

Shares/Retweets Across Language

Mean Rank facebook Mean Rank Twitter

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Figure 9: Level of Comments and Replies Across Language

According to the results, there is difference of level of audience

engagement across language used in Facebook posts, the test results (Figure 9)

show that there is a significant difference in the level of Facebook comments across

the language used, χ2(4) =171.353, p = 0.000, which is less than .05, with the highest mean rank for insulting others, second highest for self-appreciation, third

place is for appreciation for others, then sarcastic and lowest mean rank is for

criticism on others. According to the findings, insulting language for others has the

highest mean rank that reflects that the posts with insulting language havethe

highest comments. The findings of the test regarding the difference of level of

audience engagement differ across language, show that there is significant

difference in the level of replies across the different language categories, χ2 (5) =32.432, p = 0.000, with highest mean rank for sarcastic/taunting, second highest

mean rank is for appreciation for others, third place is for criticism on others

followed by insulting for others and the lowest mean rank is for appreciation for

self.

Conclusion

From the findings discussed in this study, it can be safely concluded that

MNAs are generating different audience engagement across different purpose,

language and PR Tactic but they are certainly not aware of the fact that what type

of posts and tweets are getting more audience engagement otherwise they would

have posted more political content to fulfil their political agendas.

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Comment

Comments and Replies Across Language

Mean Rank facebook Mean Rank Twitter

Pakistan Vision Vol. 20 No. 2

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It is thought-provoking to find here that in case of Facebook, the highest

number of likes, shares and comments are on posts containing self-promotion plus

opponent attack and the second highest are on self-promotion. While looking at the

result of difference in level of audience engagement across PR Tactic through

Twitter, the highest number of likes are on the tweets related to party promotion

and second highest likes are for self-promotion plus opponent attack. There is also

a significant difference in the level of replies on Tweets across the PR Tactic, with

the highest mean rank for self-promotion + opponent attack, and interestingly the

second highest replies are on tweets which are shared to attack the opponents.

While talking about retweets across different PR Tactic there is also a significant

difference, and on Twitter also self-promotion plus opponent attack tweets are

retweeted the most. Thus, it could be stated that the MNAs are generating same

audience engagement on both platforms, content having both flavors i.e. positive

self and negative others are appreciated by the audience. These findings are

partially consistent with the previous studies which showed that politicians and

political institutions predominantly employed Twitter for campaigning, self -

promotion and to spread information.

It could be said that as MNAs are using Facebook to share about their

political activities, so by communicating positive self and negative others, they are

gaining more audience engagement on Facebook, hence their political purpose is

fulfilled.

It is also unhealthy trend on social media to share and like the posts more

which are having insulting and abusive language for others on Facebook. These

types of posts can generate more audience engagement, relationship can be

cultivated with the audience but that may not be a very long lasting and positive

relationship. By doing so, MNAs can enhance their visibility but it would

ultimately affect their popularity. The situation is different on Twitter where

insulting language is at fourth place, this also reflects the mindset of the people

using Facebook and Twitter, they consider Twitter for serious and constructive

discussion more.

Clicking Responses on Social Media: Analysis of Audience Engagement on Posts and Tweets ...

293

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