Introduction

Abstract

Recently, scholars and pundits alike have argued that social media—online platforms that allow a user to send, share, and consume information1 —were crucial to the success of the Arab uprisings (e.g., Howard \& Parks, 2012; Shirky, 2011), that they played an important role in mobilizing people in Latin America (e.g., Harlow \& Harp, 2012), and that President Obama to a large extent owed his wins in the 2008 and 2012 Presidential elections to his team’s innovative use of social media (e.g., Agranoff \& Tabin, 2011; Bartlett, 2013; Crawford, 2009; Katz, Barris, \& Jain, 2013; Pollard, 2013; Swigger, 2013). While these examples are highly diverse, all focus on the supposedly high impact of social media in politics, on the instances where social media made a positive difference.