This study focuses on how the Sweden Democrats and Social Democrats use different rhetorical styles on Twitter during a three month period before the 2018 election. The purpose of the study is to investigate whether the Sweden Democrats and the Social Democrats' communication on Twitter differs, and whether this can be explained on the basis of conservative and liberal rhetoric. Thus, the study does not intend to answer whether a party is liberal or conservative, but only which way they communicate. The main question of the study has been formulated as follows: Is there a statistical connection between Sweden Democrats' and Social Democrats' different levels of success on social media and the use of a certain rhetorical style on Twitter?

The study’s analysis implementation is based on concepts derived from classical rhetorical concepts in combination with qualitative text analysis. With this method we were able to analyse over 850 tweets, and find which rhetorical concept that was most protrusive in each tweet. The results of the analysis have largely confirmed the theory of how liberal and conservative rhetoric use different rhetorical tools; ethos, pathos and logos. While the Sweden Democrats mainly used pathos arguments that pressed on the emotions of anger and fear, rational and logical logos arguments were most prominent among the Social Democrats. An overall conclusion of the study is that Twitter as a social media can be considered as a political arena where rhetorical tools are used to create public opinions. The different rhetorical approaches have likely resulted in different levels of success for both parties.