The New Public Address System: Why Do World Leaders Adopt Social Media?
The New Public Address System: Why Do World Leaders Adopt Social Media?
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DOI：
10.1093/isq/sqx047
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发表时间：
2018-03-01
影响因子：
2.6
通讯作者：
Zeitzoff, Thomas
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Barbera, Pablo;Zeitzoff, Thomas
社交媒体（尤其是 Twitter 和 Facebook）的发展促使学者们研究其对大众行为和抗议的影响。但领导人在社交媒体上也很活跃。他们使用自己的帐户与国内外观众进行交流。截至 2014 年底，超过 76% 的世界领导人活跃在社交媒体上。如何解释他们对社交媒体的采用和使用的差异？我们研究了几种不同的潜在假设：更高的人均收入和互联网普及率（现代化）、社会压力、民主化水平以及采用的地理分布（扩散）。我们发现强有力的证据表明：（1）社会动荡带来的政治压力增加；（2）民主化水平的提高与领导人对社交媒体平台的采用相关。尽管我们的研究结果是相关的，但它们揭示了制度和政治压力与社交媒体的采用和世界领导人的政治沟通有关。
The growth of social media-and, in particular, Twitter and Facebook-has led scholars to study its effects on mass behavior and protest. But leaders are also active on social media. They use their accounts to communicate with domestic and international audiences. By the end of 2014, more than 76 percent of world leaders had an active presence on social media. What explains variation in their adoption and use of social media? We look at several different potential hypotheses: higher income per capita and internet penetration (modernization), social pressure, level of democratization, and geographic spread of adoption (diffusion). We find strong support that (1) increased political pressure from social unrest and (2) higher levels of democratization correlate with leader adoption of social media platforms. Although our findings are correlational, they reveal that institutional and political pressures are related to social media adoption and the political communication of world leaders.