Why Do Courts Twitter? High Courts and Social Media in Latin America

During the last two decades, constitutional and supreme courts in Latin America have adopted different mechanisms to engage with the public, among which the use of social media plays an important role. Some Latin American courts stand out worldwide for their active online presence (David and Taras 2017). Notwithstanding the increasing importance of social networks for the public relations of public institutions, single‐case studies on their use prevail. In this article, we first present a comparative evaluation of the social media presence of 17 Latin American high courts. We study the current role of the courts in social media through an analysis of their activities and the reactions to these in the most relevant online platforms – Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. We construct two indices, one that measures the intensity of their use of social media and one that assesses the level of influence that each court has developed in these networks. With these two indices we are able to a classify courts according to their role in the social media. This classification allows us to show that some courts are highly effective with their use of social networks, while others either show a much lower level of online activism or are active but not effective. Second, we explore the different motivations of courts for the engagement in social media. From the literature on judicial legitimacy and the courts’ relation with the broader public, we conclude that, in developing democracies, the activism of high courts in social networks pursues one of the following two objectives. On the one hand, courts may seek to increase public knowledge about their work and institutional organization, which would respond to the idea of showing more transparency in their work. This objective may also be accompanied by educational purposes, that is, by the vision of a public informed about their rights and the possibilities to claim them. In addition, the objective may be selfpromotion, that is, to improve the image of the court through the promotion of its activities. In this case, the starting point is not necessarily the idea of improving transparency, but a situation of low legitimacy and high distrust in the judiciary. Using tools provided by Python, we undertake a content analysis of the publications in the accounts of the courts to assess the motivations behind their engagement. As a result, we present a typology of courts according to the objectives they pursue with their use of social media. Keywords: Comparative Politics, Institutions, Latin America, Courts, Social Media, Public Opinion