University of Athens Research Team Publishes Study in the Journal of Political Marketing

A research team from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens has recently published a study entitled ‘Exploring the Dynamics of Digital and Social Media Marketing by Political Parties: Organic Posts vs. Paid Advertising on Meta Platforms’ in the Journal of Political Marketing.

https://doi.org/10.1080/15377857.2025.2599274

The team comprised:

–Dr Vagia Mochla, Visiting Professor, Department of Business Administration, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

–Professor George Tsourvakas, Department of Business Administration, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Director of the MA in Sports, Cultural, Political Marketing

–Iakovos Stoubos, Data Analyst, MRB Hellas

Focusing on the 2023 parliamentary elections in Greece, the research empirically examines how political parties employed digital strategies, analyzing the interplay between organic content and paid ads on Facebook and Instagram and drawing on data from the Meta Ad Library.

Among the few empirical investigations in political science, it takes a systematic approach to contemporary digital communication and political party strategy using social media data. Posts with a clear thematic focus are more likely to be promoted through paid advertising, whereas topics such as health, infrastructure, and transportation appear more frequently in paid ads than in organic content.

The publication falls within the research domain of the MA in Sports, Cultural, Political Marketing at the Department of Business Administration, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Uniquely in Greece, this postgraduate programme treats political marketing as a distinct and specialized field of study, closely linked to the digital transformation of political communication.