Effects of contextual factors on governmental reliance on social media, and empirical investigation of the link between government and media accounts on social media

Governmental actors and institutions often remain active through traditional and digital channels, such as newsletters and official websites. However, political communication is increasingly done through social media, notably to communicate directly with the public. For instance, in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, national governments could rely on social media to inform the population about preventative measures to inhibit the spread of the virus. Because of their central role in informing and shaping public opinion on policy issues, governmental actors and institutions frequently seek to establish a trusting relationship with the public. News media (and journalists) may also impact this trust relationship, notably as political communication is increasingly reported in traditional media. Furthermore, news media and journalist accounts are also active on social media platforms in spreading and commenting on messages from government accounts, thereby indirectly exposing citizens to the authorities’ social media messages. Because it has been recognized as being strongly relied upon by politicians and journalists as an information source and for strategic communication, this study focuses especially on the reliance on Twitter by government actors and institutions (including country leaders, ministers, and ministries). The objective of the proposed study is twofold. First, it aims to determine which contextual (e.g., media system, freedom of press index, democracy quality, election turnout, population social media reliance, social media regulation policies) and actor-level (e.g., index of social media presence and period of existence on social media) factors are associated with Twitter reliance across several European countries. Second, it aims to describe the network structure between media and government accounts on Twitter, notably by investigating whether the digital presence of media accounts is over- or under-represented compared to the media consumption of the different national populations. To achieve these objectives, we first browsed all governmental actors and institutions to search for their presence on different social media platforms. Then, we relied on the official Twitter API to collect the network data. To answer our first objective, a correlation analysis is conducted to test the associations between the political and (social) media related factors and the reliance on Twitter. The second research objective requires the semi-automatic coding of user accounts from the network of Twitter followers. The proposed study adds to the literature on the determinants of (national) governments' use of social networking sites. It also contributes to the literature on agenda-setting dynamics between government and media actors.