What do Portuguese MPs use Twitter for? A case study on political communication in a country with a low Twitter adoption rate

Abstract

Portugal has the lowest Twitter usage rate in Western Europe and a political system that does not incentivize direct contact with voters. So, what do Portuguese MPs use Twitter for? We collected and manually coded 2,192 tweets from MPs. Our analysis shows that MPs use Twitter mainly as a business tool to serve a niche, the Twitter elite. Twitter is used significantly more often by male MPs, from small and non-conservative parties and from the largest constituencies. While following on Twitter depends on public recognition, popularity is only influenced by activity on the platform.