Central Concepts

Social media as a communication environment is challenging to define (Laaksonen, Matikainen & Tikka, 2013: 11–13). In this research, it is understood through Leonardi, Huysman, and Steinfield’s (2013) definition of enterprise social media, as a platform where social interaction takes place, thus enabling the construction of brands through this interaction. Social media will be defined more precisely in section 2.3 through the platform in question, as the focus is on the functions Facebook provides for the individual user, the content producer, and the audience. Social media’s strength as a campaign tool for politicians is that online, they are not restricted by journalists’ gate-keeping and decision-making, and are able to self-govern their self-representations (Enli, 2015a). While social media is the combination of technology and networks, it is also a combination of platforms and their users, so forming a set of communication channels and tools that organizes work and leisure far differently from what used to be possible before continuous connectivity. But this also has negative connotations which are highlighted in the latest trending ideas on media, with people discussing digi-detox and purposely taking themselves "offline" for a break from social media, for a set amount of time.

Online discussion is a concept that is reformed and re-shaped as communication culture evolves. Layouts change, technology develops, new channels are introduced, and they offer new possibilities for how discussions and new contexts for communities form. Subsequently, this changes the type of users, content, and discussions on each platform. (Suominen, Saarikoski & Vaahensalo, 2019: 7).

Online discussion allows for influencing and connecting for those who choose to enter the discussion, and the constituents who write comments, react to posts, and

engage in other ways (Robertson, Vatrapu & Medina, 2010). Papacharissi (2015) refers to this as affective publics.

Online discussion is also multimodal, so it can include text characters, emojis, links, hashtags, mentions and visual elements (Salonen, Kannasto & Paatelainen, in review). Visual elements, links and tags are also important in online messages, but these are excluded from the scope of this study to focus on what is being shown to the public directly in the text-based message. This focuses the research on content that the public see on their feed without clicking anything open.

Consequently, online discussion is here defined as the exchange of text-based messages on a social media platform. Emojis and hashtags are used in the text to explain the tone and used similarly to text in Facebook communication.

Accordingly, this limited interpretation of them in the analysis includes them only when they help to explain the text, and give precise cues to purposes such as support, and add meaning to the comments. Thus, if there was only an emoji in the comment, these were excluded from the analysis to avoid possible misinterpretations (see Weissman & Tanner, 2018).

A post can be considered as a call for discussion, and the comments as replies.

However, on Facebook, the thread of comments and the post does not always form a delineated discussion chain. Therefore Farina's (2019) model of analyzing Facebook posts as comments in a continuous process of calls and replies as text analysis does not apply here, and rather, the approach is to analyze posts and comments as separate negotiations of meaning coming from separate actors in the process which does not necessarily constitute as continuous interaction between the actors. In addition to being individual pieces of text and voiced negotiations of the politician's persona, posts also reflect a premise that comments and reactions are replies to a particular post on Facebook, which then sets their overall context.

The candidates aim to reach the electorate with their posts, and the constituents are their target focus because they are the ones who vote. However, online, it is not possible to determine whether all of the discussion participants are eligible to vote.

Thus, I will refer to them in this study as the public.

The personalization of politics is the increased focus on individual politicians at the expense of parties and topic issues (Van Aelst, Sheafer & Stanyer, 2012;

Isotalus, 2017), and can happen in various forms. With the development of political institutions, individual politicians' roles have changed, and their importance enhanced. The media prefers to present issues and topics preferably through individual politicians, rather than with parties or other collectives, which also translates to the public speaking about the same politicians as representatives for particular topics. For example, the spring 2020 COVID-19 media exposure in

Finland was carried out through Prime Minister Marin and her persona, with coverage representing the Prime Minister in photos and statements. This type of increased focus on individuals can significantly influence the electorate’s opinions and choices, and make personality and individual characteristics key considerations, first in voting decisions, and then in decision-making and political power structures (Karvonen, 2009: 95). Ultimately, people vote for politicians to represent the public. Therefore the role is also related to how they are seen as people in their private life, such as their personal characteristics, family and leisure-time, and not just their level of professional or political expertise. This also creates interest towards politicians and their representations, and part of their appeal and credibility comes from who they actually are and which values they represent. In this context, it is challenging to define what is ‘private’ to a person who needs to reveal aspects of their private life to show who they are and what they represent.

Traditional political communication research has focused on ‘image’ as the term used to refer to the public perception of individual politicians or parties (Isotalus, 2017: 122). Figure 2 presents how the concepts of image, identity, online identity, persona, and personal brand overlap and affect each other in a continuous process.

In this study, image is understood as the interpretation that an individual makes of a representation of self, and what they hear from the outside. This interpretation affects how an individual negotiates the person forward, affecting a person's personal brand. The personal brand of a politician relates to the idea of selling values and attitudes, giving promises, and demarcating oneself from other representatives as a tool in political campaigns (Kaputa, 2012). A personal brand results from the production process where a personal brand is constructed through identity (Marshall, Moore & Barbour, 2015). Moreover, it is about the "sellable self" and generating value compared to others in the field (Marshall, Moore &

Barbour, 2020: 225), and describes how the person distinguishes themselves from others and how they want to be seen. However, it is also affected by how others want the person to be seen. In this study (and reflecting previous work: Kannasto, 2020), the aspects of the public as active actors and the interaction between the actors in the process of personal brand construction has been addressed. In this way, personal brand results from an acknowledged collective production process, where the self is turned into a representation to be sold to the public. From the individual's production process side, this phenomenon has also been called profile-work in social psychology (Silfverberg, Liikkanen & Lampinen, 2011) and personal branding (Petrucă, 2016) in relation to social media services. On the other hand, image is also the result of what others believe and perceive from what is told to them about a person, and an interpretation of the personal brand. Later, this image can be communicated again, for example in Facebook comments, which can

be seen as a ‘brand construction by others’ rather than by the individual themselves.

Figure 2. Flow and effects of personal brand and image online

The idea of an acknowledged production process is central to a personal brand, which is especially interesting because for politicians, the division between the private and professional self is blurred due to the public nature of their role (Street, 2004). Political personal brand identity is dependent and built through an emotional connection between the politician and the constituent, at the same time fostering the relationship between the actors (Farhan & Omar, 2021). Because of its human aspect, the brand identity cannot be categorized as strictly as with e.g.

the brand identity linked to products (Marshall & Henderson, 2016). However, this human aspect is also a partly coincidental creation, rather than being purely the result of an acknowledged process.

Regardless of the long existence of influential figures and discussions of political topics through particular politicians, the concepts of personal brand and persona are relatively new in academic research, particularly in political communication and especially in the Finnish context. Thus, in this study, I develop also these concepts by drawing from different academic disciplines. The discussion of the personal brands of politicians and their construction intersects several fields.

Political communication sets the overall frame for it, and campaign communication connects the topic with marketing. The conceptualization of personal brands also touches the fields of social psychology (Uski, 2015) and persona studies which reflects a growing research interest rising from celebrity studies (Marshall, 2014; Marshall & Barbour, 2015). Historically, the context of

Identity

Persona

Politicians’

Personal brand

Image

Interpr etation Comments,

Tweets Shares Reactions

Online Identity

Online

Persona

persona representations has been broadcast media, where the publishing process differs from the user-based model discussed in this study. Isotalus and Almonkari (2014) have studied politicians’ personalization in Finland in conventional media using the operationalization provided by Van Aelst, Sheafer and Stanyer (2012) (Figure 1). They identify two distinct categories of the ‘popular charmer politician’

and the ‘topic politician’ (a literal translation from the original Finnish is the

"matter of fact" politician) that describe Finnish politicians and their media representations (Isotalus & Almonkari, 2011; Isotalus, 2017: 73). They concluded that Finnish politicians do not have media strategies, nor do they focus on image building. This study elaborates on their ideas in the social media context, specifically on Facebook, and adds the concept of political personal brand construction into the discussion.

Finnish researchers emphasize the hybrid media environment (Chadwick, 2013), understanding the technical side with algorithms, and also that the emotionally orientated political communication style fitted for social media requires a new kind of expertise (Knuutila & Laaksonen, 2020). Thus, more research is needed in the Finnish election campaign context in order to better understand how political personal brands are constructed, how they become successful, and what disturbs their strategic construction in this environment. This is especially vital for developing and interpreting professional campaign communications. Here, the idea of the personalization of politics is elaborated with a marketing-orientated approach where strategic brand construction is considered as a further application of personalization, and studied in the context of political communication (Karvonen, 2009; Van Aelst, Sheafer & Stanyer, 2012). This focus on personal brands in politics is furthermore an example of persona politics; a form of politics where personal characteristics and attributes are included in campaigning (Railo

& Ruohonen, 2016: 232, 240, 256).

With their centrality in business and marketing, the importance of brands has also been recognized in political communication. However, the limited amount of studies on political brands have mainly been focused on political parties or party leaders (Lilleker, 2015; Scammel, 2015; Speed, Butler & Collins, 2015). Brands are constructed through communication and communicative acts. Personal brands are not only about the qualities of a person, but also about how those qualities are packaged (Lair, Sullivan & Cheney, 2005). In this study, the chosen focus is on brands in campaign communication which relates to marketing communication and political marketing, specifically political branding. Therefore, while the focus is grounded in the field of communication studies, it also intersects with the marketing dimension from a business studies perspective. Mackey (2016), on the other hand, suggests that studying personas applies to the field of public relations

with an application of strategic forms of communication. The approach to persona as a representation and production process places this study firmly in the field of persona studies, while also further developing it. Specifically, it aligns with Mackey’s approach by moving from identity to personas and brands as strategic constructs. Furthermore, the analysis enables the testing of the ideas of Marshall, Moore and Barbour (2020: 213) as they call for a new network of researchers to join the development of the multidisciplinary field of persona studies.