How do leaders communicate during domestic crises? We provide the first global analysis of world leader communication on social media during social unrest. We develop a theory of leaders’ digital communication strategies, building on the diversionary theory of foreign policy, as well as research on the role of democratic institutions in explaining elite responsiveness. To test our theory, we construct a new dataset that characterizes leader communication through social media posts published by any head of state or government on Twitter or Facebook, employing a combination of automated translation and supervised machine learning methods. Our findings show that leaders increase their social media activity and shift the topic from domestic to foreign policy issues during moments of social unrest, which is consistent with a conscious strategy to divert public attention when their position could be at risk. These effects are larger in democracies and in particular in the run-up to elections, which we attribute to incentives created by democratic institutions. Our results demonstrate how social media provide meaningful comparative insight into leaders’ political behavior in the digital age.

国内危机期间领导人如何沟通？我们首次对社会动荡期间在社交媒体上的世界领导者交流进行了全球分析。我们在外交政策的转移理论的基础上发展了领导人的数字传播策略理论，并研究了民主制度在解释精英回应中的作用。为了检验我们的理论，我们构建了一个新的数据集，该数据集通过任何国家元首或政府首脑在 Twitter 或 Facebook 上发布的社交媒体帖子来描述领导者的沟通，采用自动翻译和监督机器学习方法的组合。我们的研究结果表明，在社会动荡时期，领导人会增加他们的社交媒体活动，并将话题从国内政策问题转移到外交政策问题上，这与在他们的位置可能处于危险中时转移公众注意力的有意识的策略是一致的。这些影响在民主国家尤其是在选举前夕更大，我们将其归因于民主制度创造的激励措施。我们的结果展示了社交媒体如何为数字时代领导人的政治行为提供有意义的比较洞察力。