Leadership and Social Media

"Social Media and the New Politics of Political Leadership examines how political leaders have adapted to the challenges of social media, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Memes among other means of persuasion. Established political leaders now use social media to grab headlines, set the agenda, respond to opponents, fund raise, contact voters directly and organize their election campaigns. Leaders of protest movements have used social media to organize and galvanize grassroots support and to popularize new narratives: narratives that challenge and sometimes overturn conventional thinking. Yet each social media platform provides different affordances, different attributes, and are used differently by political leaders. In this book, leading international experts provide an unprecedented look at the role of social media in leadership today. Through a series of case studies dealing with topics ranging from Emmanuel Macron and Donald Trump's use of Twitter, to Justin Trudeau's use of selfies and Instagram, to how feminist leaders mobilize against stereotypes and injustices, the authors argue that many leaders have found additional avenues to communicate with the public and use power. This raises the question of whether this is causing a power shift in the relationship between leaders and followers. Together the chapters in this book suggest new rules of engagement that leaders ignore at their peril. The lack of systematic theoretically informed and empirically supported analyses makes Social Media and the New Politics of Political Leadership an indispensable read to students and scholars wishing to gain new understanding on what social media means for leadership"--