Agenda-Defending of Candidate-Owned Facebook: An Investigation of the 2016 Presidential Primar

This study investigated political consequences of direct communication on Facebook. For this, it introduced a new concept: Agenda-defending. It refers to the practice of candidate-owned Facebook in political campaigns to keep the candidate agenda among Facebook users consuming candidate information directly. News media offer candidates a broader audience but candidates cannot control news. From a candidate standpoint, the uncontrollability of news can cause undesirable and negative effects on voters' perceptions. Direct communication on Facebook allows candidates to disseminate controlled messages to voters, which can generate effects that mitigate news media's agenda-setting effects on Facebook users. Textual data on the 2016 primaries of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders were analyzed. Four types of unstructured texts and public opinion data were collected.;Textual data include press releases in candidate websites, candidate Facebook posts, and individuals' comments on Facebook of each candidate, news articles by the top 3 U.S. press. As public opinion data, 12 monthly Gallup poll results were employed. Each data set was analyzed using big data analytics and compared to each other in terms of campaign agendas.;Findings evidenced agenda-defending of candidate-owned Facebook. First, the candidate agenda was correlated to Facebook user's agenda, which is greater than between the candidate- and the public agenda. This suggests direct communication on Facebook is more effective than indirect communication through news media. Second, the effect of press releases on the media agenda was greater than Facebook posts, suggesting candidate-owned Facebook is less effective than press releases in terms of agenda-building. Third, although candidate-owned Facebook is a venue where supporters can gather and share congenial opinions, agenda-defending do not occur spontaneously. If candidates fail to give them proper information, candidate-owned Facebook cannot generate agenda-defending.;The agenda-defending concept is useful to explain the political role of Facebook as a direct conduit for campaign information between candidates and voters. At a party/candidate level, it pertains to how parties and candidates can use the ability of Facebook for direct communication to affect voters cognitively. At a public opinion level, the concept bears on how candidate-owned Facebook contributes fragmentation/balkanization of public opinion in Facebook networks during political campaigns.