The 2024 parliamentary elections in the UK and France provide a rare synchronous opportunity to examine how candidates mobilise territorial attachments in digital campaigning under different institutional contexts. This study compares how parliamentary candidates in Cardiff, Wales (a devolved system) and Rennes, Brittany (a centralised system) performed localism on X during the 2024 elections. Drawing on political communication and scholarship on platform-mediated circulation, we distinguish between two dimensions of digital localism: repertoire (how candidates assemble local ties through language, places, issues, and material anchors) and circulation (patterns of platform engagement and amplification). Through mixed-methods analysis of 4,250 posts, we examine how localism is articulated across these institutional contexts and whether circulation patterns differ correspondingly. Our findings show that the repertoire differences align with institutional arrangements: candidates in Cardiff display broader, cross-partisan local repertoires featuring Welsh language use, devolution debates, and material anchors like Port Talbot steel and HS2 infrastructure. Candidates in Rennes display narrower, more episodic use of localism concentrated in regionalist parties. In contrast, circulation patterns converge across both cities. Local content achieves comparable engagement in original posts but is systematically overshadowed by national frames and party leaders in retweet networks. This disconnection shows that institutional contexts remain relevant for how candidates assemble localism, but these differences are attenuated in circulation patterns
Poletti et al. (Wed,) studied this question.
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