20.500.12556/RUL-182543 Faces of Europe structural drivers of visual personalization in political parties' Facebook campaigns Social media platforms have become central arenas for election campaigning, pushing political actors to adapt to their attention‐driven logics. One prominent strategy is visual personalization, reflecting the platforms’ person‐centered, image‐driven design. This study offers the first large‐scale, cross‐national analysis of how political parties across 23 EU countries strategically employed two dimensions of visual personalization—individualization and privatization—on Facebook during the 2024 European Parliament election campaign. It examines how their digital campaign output was shaped by two party‐level factors (populist vs. non‐populist status; government vs. opposition) and two country‐level factors (electoral systems; degree of authoritarianism). Based on a manual content analysis of 14,553 posts, we find that individualization was far more common than privatization and that party‐level characteristics exerted stronger influence than country‐level contexts. Populist and governing parties used more individualization. Privatization was more prevalent among non‐populist parties and in more liberal environments. These findings challenge assumptions about populist and authoritarian communication styles and make a theoretical contribution by demonstrating that visual personalization is a multidimensional phenomenon whose specific dimensions respond differently to structural incentives. Our results underscore the need to analytically separate individualization and privatization and to account for their distinct contextual drivers when assessing political personalization in digital environments. election campaigning European Parliament social media visual personalization Evropska unija volilne kampanje Facebook (spletno mesto) true false true Angleški jezik Slovenski jezik Članek v reviji 2026-05-15 13:14:12 2026-05-15 13:14:18 2026-07-27 13:53:05 0000-00-00 00:00:00 2026 0 0 25 str. article [no.] ǂ11739 Vol. 14 2026 0000-00-00 Zaloznikova Objavljeno NiDoloceno 0000-00-00 0000-00-00 0000-00-00 324:316.47:004.738.5 2183-2439 10.17645/mac.11739 278298371 Dezelan_et_al_M&C.pdf Dezelan_et_al_M&C.pdf 1 0AAAC72019057EC751A0B8DAA02E001F 6ec6f235e62e9b330dd8b4915cd1b08ff5985b4f1b14d8e0c5ab0400781ef383 656c1891-504f-11f1-b0ab-0050569b8976 https://repozitorij.uni-lj.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=233903 Dezelan_et_al_M&C_suppl.pdf Dezelan_et_al_M&C_suppl.pdf 1 48C656F12B180A1FCBB4BBBFDE00830D d2b789f81fcdff382ace8e22b3f89cfd9c82cf44af3e422e7be53f92221d9244 83443e80-504f-11f1-b0ab-0050569b8976 https://repozitorij.uni-lj.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=233904 https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/11739 0 90f2781c-504f-11f1-b0ab-0050569b8976 https://repozitorij.uni-lj.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=233905 Fakulteta za družbene vede 0 0 0