Paper accepted for publication in Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies Winning and Losing on Social Media - Comparing Viral Political Posts Across Platforms Anders Olof Larsson Kristiania University College Westerdals Institute for Communication and Design andersolof.larsson@kristiania.no andersoloflarsson.se @a_larsson Abstract Research on social media use during election campaigns has largely focused on Twitter. Building on recommendations from previous scholarship, the work presented here provides comparative insights into party and citizen engagement on several platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube – during the 2017 Norwegian elections. Results indicate that the themes of popular, “viral” posts vary across platforms, suggesting the need to adapt political messages to each specific outlet. The findings are discussed in light of the suggested “analytics turn” – when political actors can gauge the minutiae of how their online efforts are engaged with, how do those types of insights influence the shape and content of political campaigns? Introduction The roles of communication technologies for political campaigning purposes cannot be easily overlooked. Indeed, the suggestion that political organizations strive to adapt their communicative efforts to better align with the affordances of whatever technology that is the current “flavor of the month” (Jungherr and Theocharis, 2017: 102) rings as true today as it did in the 1970s (e.g. Lilleker, 2015). Similarly, Foot and Schneider (2006) note that “the history of campaigning could be understood as the diffusion of technology into the political sphere” (2006: 7), where the introduction of television is often viewed as a key development for campaigning practices. This suggested modern era of campaigning ushered in by television followed a premodern era, where interpersonal and print communication (such as