Political social media marketing: A systematic literature review and future research agenda

Abstract

We focus on political marketing and conduct a systematic literature review of journal articles exploring political marketing on social media. The systematic literature review delineates the current state of political social media marketing literature. It spans six databases and comprises sixty-six journal articles published between 2011 and 2020. We identify and categorize the variables studied in the literature and develop an integrative framework that links these variables. We describe the research themes that exist in the literature. The review demonstrates that the field is growing. However, the literature is fragmented, along with being predominantly based in the US context. Conceptual and theoretical shortcomings also exist. Moreover, the literature ignores pertinent contemporary topics such as co-creation, influencer marketing, and political advertising on social media. Nevertheless, a nascent domain with growing practical significance, political social media marketing provides various exciting avenues for further research, which we outline in this study.