In the electoral campaign for the February 24 parliamentary elections, the social media platforms most used by electoral competitors were Facebook and Odnoklassniki, followed by Youtube and Instagram. Most electoral competitors had an account on one of the four online platforms to interact with voters. The data is contained in the third and final report compiled by the Youth Development for Innovation organization, which monitored ten political parties and over 200 electoral competitors participating in the elections. The monitoring period was January 25 - February 24.
Livia Turcanu, a contributor to the report, told a press conference that according to CEC data, the biggest expenses on digital media advertising were reported by the Shor Party, the Democratic Party and the electoral bloc NOW. The total amount of funds spent by parties on online promotion exceeded 1.3 million lei. Parties allocated for online promotion amounts ranging from 2.2% to 60% of their total advertising budgets. In single-district constituencies, Roman Palancica, Valeriu Ghiletchi and Alexandrin Patron spent most on online promotion, all of them running in the Northern America constituency.
On Facebook, one of the most active electoral competitors was Our Party, with 158 posts, the Democracy at Home Party with 147 posts and the Shor Party with 105 posts. On Odnoklassniki, Our Party was the only party to run an official group. On Youtube, 11 political parties had accounts, but almost half were inactive during the analyzed period. The leader on this platform was PDM, followed by PSRM and the Anti-Mafia Party. On Instragram, seven parties had accounts, five of which were inactive. Only Our Party and PDM used this platform.
Mihai Mogîldea, another co-author, noted that of the 200 candidates in single-member districts subjected to monitoring, 126 are present on at least one social media platform and 74 could not be found there. More than half are present on Facebook - 110, Odnoklassniki - 49, Instragram - 48 and Youtube - 24. On Facebook, the most followed are the candidates of the bloc NOW, followed by the candidates of the Shor Party and PDM. On Odnoklassniki, the bloc NOW was the leader, followed by the PDM and Our Party. On Youtube, the activity of the candidates was low. However, the most active users were the candidates of the Shor Party, followed by those of the PDM and the bloc NOW.
The report is part of the "Monitoring online electoral activity" project, implemented between October 2018 and March 2019, with the support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.
