The political race as it played out on social media

A study by the Reuters Institute and the University of Oxford published last year showed that 71% of the public in Greece gets its information from social media, and 53% of that number from Facebook in particular. 

“Facebook remains the main tool for disseminating our content, the one with the widest appeal across all age groups,” Vassilis Panagos, the head of the team managing social media for PASOK President Nikos Androulakis, told Kathimerini shortly before Sunday’s vote.

Another platform that was successful in this election campaign was TikTok. One candidate MP posted a video of her putting on makeup, while another was seen dancing to a song by popular trapper Snik. Kyriakos Mitsotakis took very warmly to the platform, with one of the videos he posted being seen 2.1 million times. 

“There appears to have been a very organized plan as to how to make the prime minister appear more human,” said Panagiotis Papachatzis, head of communication strategy firm 4Hats, adding that the opposition’s campaign seemed a little more awkward.

‘Our communication campaign was cheerful and positive, and we didn’t refer to our rivals at all. That’s the style the prime minister adopted’

Another expert, Odysseas Korakidis, did not agree, pointing to the video by SYRIZA’s Alexis Tsipras in which he takes a swipe at the conservative government’s Youth Pass subsidy with word play, which was seen 3 million times.

“All one can really say is that it’s interesting to see how political leaders used TikTok to attract younger age groups,” said George Flessas, also a communications adviser.

Mitsotakis and Tsipras both had a team of around 10 people responsible for their social media campaigns. Konstantinos Marketos, who heads the SYRIZA team along with Leonidas Saklabanis and Konstantina Mouroutzoulia, noted that Tsipras started investing more time in TikTok in the last few months. “He began making his own videos and that had a positive impact,” said Marketos.

A source in New Democracy, meanwhile, told Kathimerini that the social media campaign for the conservative party had two objectives: reminding people what the government had accomplished and highlighting its goals for the next four-year term. “Our communication campaign was cheerful and positive, and we didn’t refer to our rivals at all,” the source said. TikTok, the person added, helped the public see Mitsotakis’ more approachable side, “an aspect we know, as his team, but which is hard to convey on other platforms.” 

PASOK’s Androulakis wanted to follow a different strategy. “Tsipras and Mitsotakis tried to act like boomers and to supposedly speak the ‘language’ of young people, but politics is not a product; you need a political narrative,” argued Panagos.

On the other hand, the head of the Greek Communist Party (KKE), Dimitris Koutsoumbas, may not have any personal social media accounts – “because he has a very active presence through the party and doesn’t express himself, but the party’s collective stance,” according to a KKE source – but he is, perhaps, the most social-media-friendly of the politicians and a staple on the popular satirical platform Luben, which has given him enormous exposure.