Digital leaders: How the digital is changing political leadership

Political leadership is a widely studied phenomenon, since classical times (Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Rousseau), during the origins and the develop of political science (Weber, Lasswell, Paige, Blondel, Burns) and which –given its necessary character– adapts to very different social realities. In recent years, the digital revolution has produced transformations in all types of societies, both democratic and authoritarian. Leaders had to adapt to the new digitalized environment to campaign and secure their position, to explain decisions, and to proof their responsiveness and awareness of their responsibilities. Observers of current political leaders witnessed different styles in coping with the challenges of the digitalized societies. The great activity in social networks of radical leaders such as Donald Trump or Giorgia Meloni as well as the multiple international interventions of Volodímir Zelensky through videoconference during the Russian invasion have shown the importance of new technologies to exercise leadership in our time, not only as an instrument of communication and engagement with the followers, but as an important means of management. Amongst democratic leaders, a generation of young leaders like Sanna Marin have come to power by making natural use of digital tools. These few examples already display the scope of differences in personalities and leadership styles. Our goal is to define and operationalise the concept of digital leadership respecting both traditional concepts of leadership and recent developments to create a typology of digital leaders, depending on their different attributes and performance in light of their digital appearance.