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How do political parties leverage patriotic appeals in their online campaigning within the context of autocracies and hybrid regimes? This study delves into the digital campaign strategies deployed by political parties during the most recent legislative elections in Russia (2021) and Ukraine (2019). In light of the armed conflict between Russia-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces in the eastern area of Ukraine, war-related themes and patriotic rhetoric emerged as pivotal concerns for politicians in both countries. The “rally around the flag” phenomenon posits that, in times of crisis, citizens often experience an intensified sense of national identity and patriotic fervor. Consequently, references to patriotism and related topics may evoke positive responses and prove instrumental for politicians during elections, serving to engage, mobilize, and attract voters. Drawing on a manual content analysis of the underlying communication strategies, we assessed whether parties’ reference to patriotic gestures and symbols or their attention to related policy topics (defense, war and military conflicts, and foreign policy and international relations) yielded an increased level of user engagement. Our findings reveal that references to patriotic symbols engendered increased user engagement within the Russian context, albeit without significantly affecting the engagement of Ukrainian voters. The latter tended to exhibit greater engagement with posts addressing defense and foreign policy matters though. Interestingly, Russian parties conspicuously avoided war-related topics, while Ukrainian voters displayed a propensity to penalize such content by generating fewer reactions to it.

Negativity is a common feature of current online political communication during elections. Previous studies on negativity and its impact on user engagement focused mainly on Western European countries. Considering the political particularities of the Central and Eastern European countries, the present study focused on Czechia, Hungary, Lithuania, the Republic of Moldova, and Romania, where national election campaigns took place from 2020 to 2022. We aimed to investigate comparatively different topics prevalent in the negative messages and look at users’ engagement with negative communication. We applied manual content analysis of N = 4,095 Facebook posts published four weeks before the elections by political parties elected in the national parliament. Results showed significant differences across countries using negative messages and the associated topics. The posts’ highest rate of negative statements was identified in Czechia (52%), while the lowest was in Lithuania (17%). There are topics consistently associated with negative statements across most countries, such as corruption, economy and finance, foreign policy, labor, and social issues. However, given that those elections took place during the Covid-19 pandemic in Czechia, Lithuania, Romania, and the Republic of Moldova and, in Hungary, after Russia invaded Ukraine, we also identified contextual topics such as health, war, and conflicts with other countries and defense that were mainly associated with negative messages. Furthermore, negative posts generate more reactions and comments than posts containing no negative statements. Addressing foreign policy in negative posts generates significantly more reactions and comments.