The Online Communication of Political Parties and their Leaders Reacting to Street Protests in Romania Senior Lecturer Meda MUCUNDORFEANU, PhD Faculty of Political, Administrative and Communication Sciences Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania E-mail:
[email protected] Abstract. At the beginning of 2017 massive protests took place on the streets of the biggest cities in Romania, unprecedented in the post-De- cembrist history of the country. They were caused by a decree passed by the government that was meant to decriminalize certain offences, in- cluding official misconduct. In situations such as social movements on a larger scale, the communication flow on social networking platforms, es- pecially on Facebook, which is the most popular social media platform in Romania, increases exponentially (Tufekci & Wilson, 2012; Valenzuela, 2013). In this context, the present paper focuses on the analysis of the so- cial media communication of the main political parties and their leaders. The communication strategy expressed especially on Facebook is interest- ing, because it is preferred by a large part of the protest participants (for information regarding Facebook groups of protesters see Adi & Lilleker, 2018). The central question of the present paper revolves around the way in which political parties and leaders communicated during the afore- mentioned protests. We have carried out a computer-assisted frequency analysis and have analyzed 15 Facebook accounts of the main political parties and their leaders during the period January 18th – March 5th 2017, which corresponds to the period of the protests. Keywords: Social Media; Official communication; Political parties; Political actors; Credibility. Journal of Media Research, DOI:10.24193/jmr.34.3 50 Vol.