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The Social Media Balancing Act: Testing the Use of a Balanced Self-Presentation Strategy for Politicians Using Twitter
Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden.
University of Edinburgh, UK.
Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden.
Södertörn University, School of Social Sciences, Academy of Public Administration.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-1567-1224
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2017 (English)In: Computers in human behavior, ISSN 0747-5632, E-ISSN 1873-7692, Vol. 74, p. 277-285Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Politicians’ clear separation between their professional and private lives has been challenged by a growing need to be seen as personable, especially on social media where this is the norm. Little, however, is known about the effect on a political party when its politicians reveal aspects of their private lives on social media. The present study addresses this question. Through the lens of self-presentation theory, we are the first to test the effect of a balanced presentation strategy on Twitter (i.e., tweets that involve both professional and private aspects of their lives) as opposed to a strictly professional one. A longitudinal design was adopted with 265 Twitter users as participants. The results showed that a balanced strategy increased both interest in the politician’s party and intention to vote for that party, irrespective of a user’s political interest, social media usage intensity, or age, or the gender of either the user or the communicating politician. Furthermore, liking the tweets emerged as a crucial mediator. This study contributes valuable knowledge on self-presentation strategies of politicians specifically, and more broadly regarding self-presentation in the face of context collapse. However we call for future research to validate our experimental findings in a real-life setting. Implications are provided for political parties and others.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Elsevier, 2017. Vol. 74, p. 277-285
National Category
Political Science
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URN: urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-32435DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2017.04.042ISI: 000403864100029Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85018330166OAI: oai:DiVA.org:sh-32435DiVA, id: diva2:1089908
Available from: 2017-04-21 Created: 2017-04-21 Last updated: 2022-05-03Bibliographically approved

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Madestam, Jenny

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CiteExportLink to record
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Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • harvard-anglia-ruskin-university
  • apa-old-doi-prefix.csl
  • sodertorns-hogskola-harvard.csl
  • sodertorns-hogskola-oxford.csl
  • Other style
More styles
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  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
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