Leader role and platform in campaign communication. An analysis of function, tone, frames, and focus.

Whether leader role and platform jointly structure campaign discourse remains unsettled in hybrid media environments. This study analyzes a balanced corpus of 340 leader authored statements from Albania’s 2025 parliamentary election to test how four content dimensions-function, tone, frames, and focus-vary by leader role (incumbent vs. opposition), platform (television vs. Facebook), and their interaction. Statements were human coded with validated typologies and modeled using multinomial (function, frames), ordered (tone), and binary (focus) logit, including a leader role × platform term and controls for message length and campaign phase. Defenses are rare, and near parity between acclaims and attacks reflects offsetting tendencies by leader role. Platform differences are conditioned by leader role rather than uniform: in the aggregate, Facebook carries more acclaims and a slightly more positive tone, whereas television carries more conflict framing. Overall policy focus is higher on television, yet the platform effect on focus reverses by leader role (policy emphasis increases for the incumbent on Facebook and decreases for the opposition on Facebook). Framing mirrors these logics: the opposition emphasizes anticorruption on Facebook, the incumbent increases economic framing online, and integration remains the incumbent’s dominant frame without a platform shift. By integrating four content dimensions within a single, leader constant, cross platform design, the study refines functional theory under hybrid media conditions and provides replicable evidence from a leader centric, polarized context with implications for theory, campaign strategy, and media practice.

在混合媒体环境中，领导者角色与传播平台是否共同建构竞选话语，这一问题尚未有定论。本研究构建了阿尔巴尼亚2025年议会选举中340份由领导者撰写的表态的平衡语料库，以此检验四大内容维度——功能、基调、框架与聚焦点——如何随领导者角色（在任者vs反对党领袖）、传播平台（电视vs Facebook）及其交互作用而变化。所有表态均采用经过验证的类型学进行人工编码，并分别使用多项逻辑回归（功能、框架维度）、有序逻辑回归（基调维度）与二元逻辑回归（聚焦点维度）进行建模，模型中纳入领导者角色×平台交互项，并控制了消息长度与竞选阶段变量。防御性表态较为罕见，赞誉性表述与攻击性表述近乎持平，这反映出不同领导者角色间存在相互抵消的表达倾向。平台差异受领导者角色调节，而非呈现统一规律：整体而言，Facebook平台上的赞誉性表述更多，基调也略微更积极，而电视平台则更多使用冲突框架。总体政策聚焦度在电视平台上更高，但平台对聚焦度的影响随领导者角色发生反转：在任者在Facebook平台上的政策关注度有所提升，而反对党领袖在该平台上的政策关注度则有所下降。框架使用也符合这一逻辑：反对党领袖在Facebook平台上侧重反腐败框架，在任者在网络渠道中则强化经济框架，而政策整合始终是在任者的主导框架，未随平台发生变化。本研究将四大内容维度整合至统一的、以领导者为恒定变量的跨平台研究设计中，既完善了混合媒体环境下的功能理论，也从以领导者为中心的极化语境中提供了可复制的实证证据，可为相关理论、竞选策略与媒体实践提供启示。