EU executives on social media: Assessing the potential and trajectories of legitimation via public communication on Twitter

Abstract

Social media offers opportunities for European Union (EU) executives to improve their precarious legitimacy. Their broad, unmediated, instant, and cheap reach allows EU executives to explain to citizens what they are doing in their own words and to learn from citizens what they want. Yet, while the potential of social media is well-known, we know very little about how EU executives use them. This study addresses this gap by analysing how EU executives legitimise themselves through strategic public communication on Twitter. Through a manual and automated content analysis of a sample of 73,413 tweets, we show how EU executives engage in ‘opinionated communication’. Appeals to output legitimacy are the single most prominent form of self-legitimation, but they are often combined with opinions, calls for input, and/or emphasis on activities. Our findings challenge the common perception that EU executives are risk-averse communicators who focus exclusively on factual output-oriented communication.