The book “Networked Locality” brings together the findings of a five-year research project, offering what is, to our knowledge, the most comprehensive theoretical and empirical account to date of social media’s role in local political publics. Combining a national survey with extensive content analysis and councillor survey, the study examines how citizens experience, understand, and engage with local politics on social media; how these interactions shape political behavior; and how local public spheres are structured online. It also investigates how local politicians use and strategize around social media.
One of the book’s central insights is that much of what people experience as “political” on social media—especially on Facebook—is, in fact, local. Nearly half of the political content users encounter there relates to municipal-level politics. This is a crucial finding, as discussions about the political role of social media tend to focus almost exclusively on national politics, overlooking the fact that social media-based political engagement often has local roots.
Another key conclusion is that the rise of local social media-based publics is deeply intertwined with national political interests. Social media has elevated the strategic importance of the local level, enabling national parties to reach voter segments that are otherwise difficult to access. The reason for this is straightforward: people want access to practical information related to their immediate surroundings, and they can most easily obtain such information by following local agents on social media. Consequently, following local actors is largely independent of political sympathies or interests, whereas national-level political pages tend to reach only their existing supporters and those already actively engaged with politics. As a result, national political actors actively seek visibility and influence in local online arenas—particularly during election campaigns—where such presence can have major mobilizing effects. Yet this dynamic remains largely invisible in mainstream analyses of national campaign strategies.
Mapping the Demand and Supply of Local Publics
The first two chapters of the book focus on the “demand” and “supply” sides of local online publics. On the demand side, a nationally representative survey maps how local politics features in Hungarians’ everyday social media experiences. The findings show that, in local political communication, Facebook is the platform that matters. It has become one of the most important sources of local information, reaching wide segments of the population with local political content—at least as much as with national political content.
The mayor’s page and the main local Facebook group play pivotal roles. More than one-quarter of all respondents are members of a Facebook group dedicated to their own municipality. These groups are spaces where local and national politics frequently intermingle. Interestingly, those exposed to local politics online tend also to be exposed to national politics—suggesting that Facebook’s algorithms treat these spheres as intertwined. Yet local actors, especially mayors and community groups, are remarkably effective at reaching citizens who are otherwise politically disengaged.
On the supply side, the study finds that most municipalities develop some kind of local communication infrastructure on Facebook. In small towns and villages, this often means just a few actors (such as the municipal page, the mayor, and one central group) that reach a large share of residents. In larger towns, the structure becomes more complex but also more fragmented. About one-third of Hungarian settlements, mostly small ones, have no identifiable local Facebook page at all—a phenomenon the study terms a local-level Facebook news desert. However, even many small municipalities manage to create an active online infrastructure with significant local reach. Importantly, stronger and more active networks tend to emerge where national parties have some presence—especially when the mayor represents a national party.
Local Politicians and Social Media Strategies
The second part of the book, based on content analysis and a survey of councillors, turns to local politicians as the central hubs of these local publics. Local politicians are especially active in larger towns, but village mayors enjoy particularly intense attention within their own communities. Here again, partisan motivation plays a major role: politicians affiliated with national parties tend to be more active, assuming what we call a local partisan promoter role.
An extended, five-wave content analysis conducted over two years examined mayors’ Facebook activity in depth. It highlights a core challenge they face: reconciling two potentially conflicting roles. On the one hand, they act as integrative information hubs—providing useful, nonpartisan information to politically diverse and often apolitical audiences. On the other hand, many of them are partisan actors who must sometimes mobilize their base and promote national political narratives. The result is what we describe as a contextually conditioned partisan promoter role: during routine periods, mayors emphasize neutral, service-oriented communication to maintain a broad following; but in campaign periods, they can strategically activate their accumulated social media capital in support of partisan goals—albeit in subtler, less confrontational ways than in national politics.
Do Local Facebook Experiences Shape Political Behavior?
The final chapter examines whether local Facebook experiences influence political behavior—particularly whether they shape attitudes toward national politics. The findings suggest that local online engagement can act as a mild catalyst for civic involvement. Followers of mayors tend to become more active locally, and often more trusting and satisfied with local governance. However, this effect rarely extends to national-level political attitudes—meaning that spillover effects are limited.
Interestingly, participation in local Facebook groups can sometimes alienate citizens from local politics—except when the mayor is also active in those groups. This underlines the political risk mayors face when they allow public discussions in local groups to unfold without their participation, leaving space for opponents to shape the narrative.
Why the Local Matters
Ultimately, Networked Locality demonstrates that on Facebook, politics is not just—or even primarily—national. It is deeply local. Vibrant public spheres emerge around everyday issues, but these are never fully separate from national politics: they overlap, intertwine, and are often infused with national narratives and strategic interests.
In this hybrid space, national political actors find new opportunities to reach citizens who would never follow a national politician online—but who eagerly follow their mayor or participate in local groups for practical, community-related reasons. These less politically engaged voters are crucial during elections, making local online arenas increasingly central battlegrounds in national political competition.
