Development of social media has opened new possibilities in many areas, including political. With the rising popularity of using social networks in politics, there has also been a lot more research into this phenomenon. In scientific literature we couldn’t find any research that analyses the compliance of social media communication of political parties with their political programmes.
With this aim research has been conducted to analyse tweets from political parties on social media Twitter in pre-election time for the election of the Slovenian national assembly in the year 2018. Firstly, political programme of each party was analysed with the purpose of identifying goals of political programmes. Then the tweets were classified into categories based on their content, whether they contained goals from political programmes or other content which wasn't relevant to their goals.
The research results suggest that most of the tweets were not tied to political programmes, but were mostly aimed at promoting a political party or their candidates. Tweets containing goals of political programmes were the most represented in political parties NSi, SDS and SD. The most active political party during the examined period was SMC. The closer all political parties got to election day, the more tweets they published.
Our research offers insight into the timelines and content of published tweets from Slovenian political parties in pre-election time. The results of the research are beneficial for political science on one hand and professionals in public relations on the other, since they contribute to a better understanding of the use of Twitter as a form social media by a relevant segment of Slovenian politicians.
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