The New Public Address System: Why Do World Leaders Adopt Social Media?

The emergence of social media has led scholars to focus on its effects on mass behavior and protest. A key understudied question is what explains the variation in the adoption and use of social media by world leaders? Social media, and in particular Twitter and Facebook, have emerged as important, new channels for political communication. By the end of 2014, over 76% of world leaders had an active presence on social media platforms, which are being used to communicate with domestic and international audiences. We look at several different potential hypotheses that explain adoption of social media by world leaders including: modernization, social pressure, level of democratization, and diffusion. We find strong support for two explanations–increased political pressure from social unrest and higher levels of democratization both increase the likelihood of leaders adopting social media. Taken together, these findings show how institutional and political pressures shape political communication and leader behavior. ∗Pablo Barberá (www.pablobarbera.com) is a Moore-Sloan Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Data Science, New York University. He can be reached at [email protected]. †Thomas Zeitzoff (www.zeitzoff.com) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Affairs at American University. He can be reached at [email protected].