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Social media have become the main channel of direct communication between members of parliament and constituents. The study analyzes the content in all Israeli MPs' Facebook channels throughout an entire term of parliament and asks if the results are consistent with the equalization or the normalization hypotheses.

The study uses automatic analysis to produce a birds-eye-view of the content uploaded to the Facebook pages of all Israeli MPs during a full term of parliament. All 106 MP pages were automatically scraped. Some complementary information was added to each post in the dataset, such as post length (number of words) and whether the page belongs to a member of the opposition or coalition. The total of 441,974 posts was analyzed to compare engagement and publication rates between pages, coalition vs opposition MPs, MPs vs users etc.

The findings demonstrate that the MP-Facebook sphere is non-egalitarian, in that it follows skewed distributions by MPs in terms of post publication and engagement rates; non-inclusive, in that pages of coalition members receive significantly much more engagement vis-a-vis pages of members of the oppositions; and “top-down”, in that MP-authored posts receive dramatically more engagement then user-authored posts, suggesting MPs have a near-monopoly on setting the agendas manifest in their pages, while users have extremely limited agenda-setting capabilities in these pages.

Previous studies have looked at the character of the interactions between MPs and constituents on the Internet and particularly on online social media. Yet, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no study provides a birds-eye-view of the content in all MPs' Facebook channels throughout a full term of parliament. Such an analysis provides a more comprehensive understanding of the character and dynamics of conversations that take place in such arenas.

This paper aims to investigate the prevalence of corruption in Ghana to understand how and why it has turned public procurement into a mere money-making scheme instead of a means to provide needed public goods and services.

The study focuses on Ghana as a case study and mobilizes the monetization of politics lenses. Data are collected via interviews with key officials across the procurement sector (including the government, donors and civil society), documents, documentaries and news articles.

The findings suggest that the increasing costs of elections and political financing coupled with the costs of vote-buying, which has become informally institutionalized, intensify corruption practices and, consequently, turns public procurement into a mere source of cash for political ends. Political appointments and legalized loopholes facilitate this by helping to nullify the safeguard accounting and other control institutions are designed to provide. Likewise, enduring poverty and rising inequality “force” citizens into a vote-buying culture which distorts democratic premises that may drive out unscrupulous politicians; thus, perpetuating capture schemes. Civil society's efforts to remedy these have had little success, and corruption and inequality remain rife.

The main practical implication of the study lies in the need for a gradual demonetization of elections, and the consideration of the fundamental function of public procurement as a policy instrument embedded in economic, social, cultural and environmental plans. Additionally, given the connectedness of the various corruption issues raised, a comprehensive system-based approach in dealing with them would be more effective than a piecemeal approach targeting each issue/problem in isolation.

While extant literature has examined the issue of endemic corruption in developing countries using state capture, few have attempted to explain why it remains enduring, particularly in public procurement. This study, therefore, contributes to the literature on corruption and state capture theoretically and empirically by drawing on monetization of politics from political science to explain why corruption and state capture endure in certain contexts (with Ghana as an illustrative example) which reduce public procurement to a cash-milking scheme.

Paid digital campaigning tools play an increasingly pivotal role in individual election campaigns worldwide. Extant literature often juxtaposes the equalization theory, which argues that these tools create a level playing field, and the normalization theory, which contends that strong and resource-rich politicians benefit most from digital tools. This article aims to inform this debate by looking at it from a campaign expenditure perspective beyond the Anglo-American bias of most research on the subject.

The authors use an original dataset on campaign expenditures and resources of 1,798 candidates running for 13 Belgian parties in the 2019 federal parliamentary election. Relying on multilevel statistical models, the authors link the candidates' digital campaign expenses to their incumbency status, which is expected to affect digital campaigning.

While earlier work on majoritarian cases often showed contradicting results, this study on the Belgian flexible-list proportional representation (PR) case provides strong support for the equalization theory by demonstrating that incumbents are not only less inclined to spend on digital tools than challengers, but also spend a smaller part of their budget on these tools.

This paper contributes to the literature by exploring the equalization versus normalization debate from a campaign expenditure perspective using a made to purpose dataset in a non-Anglo-American context.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-12-2021-0679

The study aims to examine the validity of the gender affinity effect on social media throughout election campaigns.

This paper examines the role of gender in political discourse, using citizens' conversations on Facebook in the days leading up to Israel's 2021 elections as its case study. The analysis measured the engagement generated by male and female politicians in citizens' publicly open Facebook discussions (N = 1875) using a trend-tracking software. The analysis uses t-tests to examine differences in engagement between conversations about male versus female politicians and between posts written by male versus female authors. In addition, a two-way ANOVA analysis was conducted in an attempt to understand the shared impact of both the politicians' gender and posts authors' gender on the posts' engagement.

The study reveals that although more posts discuss male politicians, posts dealing with female politicians expressed significantly more support towards those politicians. The analysis also highlights that women tend to write more supportive posts and that most of their posts deal with female politicians. Furthermore, interaction effect analysis revealed that women's posts about female politicians generate more engagement in terms of likes, comments and number of participants than posts written by women that deal with male politicians.

The findings should encourage women politicians to run their campaigns via social media.

The study presents the first social media analysis for gender affinity effect and highlights the importance of the effect in online political communication studies.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-04-2022-0199

While morality is ever-present in elections, scholars have yet to merge political public relations and Moral Foundations Theory. It is crucial to assess the complex morality present not only in social deduction, but also in political strategic communication. The current work aims to analyze the issue agendas and their relationships in the 2020 presidential campaign and assesses their moral strategy.

This study used a computer-assisted content analysis (N = 7,888) with each moral intuition coded from the Moral Foundations Dictionary. Datapoints included campaign tweets, Facebook posts, debate performances, remarks, news releases and nomination acceptance speeches. Coverage included articles from including The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CNN and Fox News to assess both liberal and conservative media.

Candidates' issue and moral agendas were correlated with each other and with the media's agenda. Comparatively, the Biden campaign has stronger correlations when it came to connecting with issues, stakeholders and moral intuitions in the media agenda than the Trump campaign. For issues, the Biden campaign prioritized COVID-19 and the economy, while the Trump campaign prioritized the economy and crime. The candidates also had similar moral strategies.

This study suggests effectively leveraging organizational communications in democracies can support the transfer of object salience, moral attributes and networks to media coverage, public discourse and opponent messaging. It can also help achieve organizational goals by managing public image, reputation and expectations.

This work expands the literature by taking a pluralist moral psychology approach in assessing the salience and correlation of five moral intuitions: harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect and purity/sanctity. This study serves as a springboard for examining morality's impact on political public relations.

This study investigates the frequency and specificity of health-related issues discussed during the East Java Indonesia Gubernatorial Election Campaign 2018.

The research utilized a mixed-methods approach, combining topic modeling and qualitative thematic analysis, to analyze 4,023 online news articles from March to June 2018. From the data sources obtained in terms of time frame, this research can be categorized as a retrospective study because it examines origins from events that have already occurred.

The study found that health issues accounted for only 6% of all gubernatorial election news in each selected online media portal. The health issues identified were categorised into eight groups: health financing and facilities, health workforce, malnutrition and stunting, leprosy, cigarettes and tobacco, healthy lifestyles, pregnancy and breastfeeding, and disability. The study also reveals a need for increased attention to health-related issues in political campaigns and media. By focusing on the health-related issues raised during the campaign, the study provides valuable insights into the gaps and priorities in addressing the health needs of the East Java population. The research framework used in this study offers a valuable approach for analyzing online data sources using qualitative analysis capacity. The study can improve health policies and outcomes in the local election campaign by raising awareness of health issues and promoting informed decision-making among voters.

This research limitation is a local political campaign case in Indonesia. The research indicates that health issues receive limited coverage during election campaigns, suggesting a lack of emphasis on health as a critical issue among East Java's electorate.

The study can improve health policies and outcomes in the local election campaign by raising awareness of health issues and promoting informed decision-making among voters.

This research explores how protest events can change and develop over time, through an analysis of stakeholder perceptions of the EXIT festival in Serbia. In doing this, it builds on previous research into protest events from a critical events studies perspective and has implications for the management and understanding of events linked to social movements.

This research took a neo-institutionalist perspective and is based on 18 stakeholder interviews, which were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Purposive sampling in the highly-networked city of Novi Sad, Serbia, allowed for the inclusion of diverse participants from politics, NGOs, media and the festival itself.

The findings reveal that the EXIT festival has departed significantly from its original protest roots. Although it is now perceived as part of the dominant political culture in Serbia, it still has the potential to campaign on issues of relevance to the region, which is unrealised. This research demonstrates that the neo-institutionalist perspective can offer fresh insights for research into protest events. Taking this perspective suggests practical implications for the managers of events with protest roots and for social movements seeking to use protestival-style methods to achieve social change.

This paper provides a new theoretical perspective on protest events and proposes a new model that can be used in future research into protest events that persist over time. It also suggests implications for the management and development of protest events within social movements.

This study aims to investigate whether objective and subjective rationality affects individual voters’ use of accounting information and if such use affects voting behavior. While prior accounting studies assume voter rationality concerning financial performance and political outcomes, this study distinguishes between two types of voters: objective rational voters (who make voting decisions about multiple alternatives based on objective information) and subjective rational voters (who make decisions based on their subjective values, and thus do not explore information or explore only information biased toward one alternative). This study expects that accounting information can influence the voting behavior of objective and subjective rational voters.

Focusing on the 2020 Osaka Metropolitan Plan Referendum, this study used an online survey conducted on 768 respondents after the referendum.

This study finds that objective rational voters use accounting information more than subjective rational voters, voters who used accounting information were more likely to vote against the referendum, and voting behavior is not directly affected by the type of rationality of voters; rather, objective rational voters are more likely to use accounting information that has a mediating effect on voting behavior.

The results advance the understanding of public sector accounting research and practices by providing evidence of the individual voter’s use of accounting information and their voting behavior in political contexts.

This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the effects of active political engagement in port-of-entry jobs and employment pathways for graduate students in a post-communist context which is characterized by clientelism. The data are derived from a structured survey of a small local labour market where political clientelism is pronounced due to the strong network ties. Controlling for both demand and supply factors, the authors identify a profile for those who are more prone to engage politically in exchange for public sector jobs, which are in turn vulnerable to regime changes.

The authors use data from a sample of 191 students that records month-to-month employment states for three consecutive years (2012–2014). The method attempts to replicate an experimental design with repeated measures before and after the June 2013 government elections. The data is analysed using sequence analysis with optimal matching and difference-in-difference methods.

The analysis provides evidence of links between political engagement and selection onto different employment pathways under conditions of political clientelism. The pathways themselves are also shown to be differentially impacted by the 2013 election (positively or negatively). Together, these results are supportive of claims that jobs in Albania, particularly those in the public sector, are linked to the short-term presence of vote-buying. This is shown to be the case even for this sample of educated members of the labour force (i.e. university graduates). The analysis also finds evidence of accumulative disadvantages over time, in relation to subjective perceptions of life satisfaction, migration intentions, employability and success in life, as a result of active political engagement.

The study uses a unique data set and a novel methodological approach, sequence analysis. Occupational history calendars were used to capture quantitative information recording detailed work histories. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this innovative method has not been used before to measure the temporal effects of political engagement on employment pathways.

This study aims to contribute to the corporate political activities (CPAs) field by suggesting the effect of campaign contributions on the time that firms wait for regulators’ decisions.

This paper analyzes 358 mergers and acquisitions (M&A) from 2008 to 2017 in Brazil through ordinary least squares regression with robustness control and causal operationalization in a small vote margins treatment.

Campaign contributions speed up the M&A regulator’s decisions. Campaign contributions amounts proved to be effective in decreasing the waiting time for judgments of M&A deals. Besides, National Development Bank disbursements to companies in M&A deals, served as a moderator to help reduce the waiting time.

The main implication of this paper to the antecedents of CPA research is the estimation of time as an output of the political efforts of firms. Previous research focuses on what firms could get. Here, the authors focus on when. As a limitation, this study analyzes CPA through campaign contributions, as the only reliable source of CPA publicly available. Firms use multiple mechanisms of CPA. It would be expected for new papers to test different CPA mechanisms, such as political connections and lobbying.

This study provides evidence of the use of CPA as a relevant mechanism for firms to avoid institutional risks by getting regulators’ decisions faster. This evidence is useful for firms to grant their competitive advantage in a highly volatile environment, such as an emerging market.

What happens in the nonmarket environment interferes within markets. Businesses seek to finance political projects with which they are more aligned, and governments provide capital to businesses in exchange for political support. Whether to expand successfully may also depend on early entrants, who will have acquired enough leadership to dominate the market.

While most of the research on nonmarket strategy focuses on what firms can get as an output for CPA efforts, this study provides here evidence on when firms can get it. As one can cite, in business, time is money.