Is this real life?–Exploring leadership communication on Twitter/X

Abstract

As central actors in corporate communications, CEOs embody the values and goals of their organisation. With ongoing digitalisation and the proliferation of social media in both private and business environments, leadership communication has undergone profound change. In this vein, research increasingly acknowledges the role of ‘social CEOs’ who engage with their stakeholders in genuine communications over social media. However, research on leaders’ distinct social media communication remains scarce. To address this gap, our study explores leadership communication via social media in comparison to traditional (non-social media) communication. Based on tweets and non-social media documents from 88 CEOs of worldwide leading companies, our results indicate that leaders use a distinct social media framing that is significantly different from their non-social media framing. Our findings have theoretical and practical implications for the understanding of leaders’ framing behaviour as well as the resulting social media communication.