Social Media

PMR — pp. 1-28 2026-09-17 Original Unpacking local government responsiveness to social media: evidence from Mexico Guillermo M. Cejudo, Fernando Nieto-Morales Abstract Local governments worldwide increasingly adopt social media to engage citizens. What factors make governments more likely to respond to citizens on social media? We explore how Mexican municipal governments use Facebook to interact with citizens, with a mixed-methods approach analysing data from 635 municipalities. Using a crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis, we distinguish between general responsiveness (channel setup) and interactive responsiveness (substantive engagement). Small municipalities are more likely to engage citizens when adaptive potential and formal participation policies are present. In contrast, larger cities show responsiveness when they have available resources, established participation rules and policies, and a propitious environment.

APSR — pp. 1-18 2026-09-01 Original Measuring Partisanship and Representation in Online Congressional Communications MICHAEL KISTNER, MICHAEL HESELTINE, ROBERT ALVAREZ, MAYA FITCH, LUCAS LOTHAMER, ELIZABETH SIMAS

PSJ 54/3 2026-08-09 Original Power Through Visibility: How Policy Narratives Matter in Climate Change Debate on X Simon Bulian, Anne‐Marie Parth, Maria Becker, Lars Tapken

JOP 88/3 pp. 967-982 2026-07-01 Original Bottom-Up? Top-Down? Determinants of Issue Attention in State Politics Andreu Casas, Oscar Stuhler, Julia Payson, Joshua A. Tucker, Richard Bonneau, Jonathan Nagler

JOP 88/2 pp. 666-680 2026-04-01 Original Military Power and Ideological Appeals of Religious Extremists Luwei Ying Abstract The proliferation of terrorist propaganda threatens societies worldwide. Yet, we know little about violent extremists’ strategy in disseminating their ideologies. This article studies the ideological appeals of jihadi groups, among the most prominent contemporary conflict movements, and shows how these groups navigate between religious and secular narratives in response to the fluctuations in their military power. Weaker groups must prioritize their core believers and foreground a more radical religious ideal, while stronger groups seek broader support from more moderate individuals and thus pitch themselves more secularly. I illustrate this dynamic with an original database of 87 magazines published regularly by 35 jihadi groups from 1984 to 2019. Furthermore, I leverage approximately six million tweets from 21,000 ISIS-related accounts in 2015 to examine the jihadists’ mobilization efforts regarding different audiences. Overall, I demonstrate that violent groups put more emphasis on their ideological brand when they are militarily weaker.

JOP 88/2 pp. 647-665 2026-04-01 Original How Exiles Mobilize Domestic Dissent Elizabeth R. Nugent, Alexandra A. Siegel Abstract How can exiles mobilize dissent back home? We argue that internet communication technologies enable exiles to play an instigator role in domestic contentious politics. Analyzing the behavior of three types of social media users—influencers, amplifiers, and consumers—we explore how Egyptian exiles participated in a cascade of online dissent that culminated in sizable anti-regime protests in September 2019. Analyses of large-scale digital trace data from Facebook, Google, Twitter, and YouTube demonstrate that exiles were central to the introduction and amplification of oppositional content, facilitating its circulation among a domestic audience that then localized the content by linking it with place-based calls for protest. Our findings suggest that content produced and amplified by exiles facilitates coordination among domestic opposition and challenges the supporting role typically ascribed to opposition abroad.

CQ 266 pp. 435-452 2026-03-30 Original Political Satire and the Decline of Discourse Quality: Evidence from China’s Online Public Sphere

APSR — pp. 1-19 2026-03-03 Original Initiate and Elevate! How Political Parties Can Set an Agenda DANIEL SANDVEJ ERIKSEN Abstract The study of political agenda setting is a cornerstone in political science. Within this literature, political parties are implicitly portrayed as being capable of proactively initiating discussions. However, this fundamental notion of party agency deserves further theoretical and empirical attention. In response, this article crafts a new model (the Issue Initiation Model) that opens the window into parties’ efforts to set an agenda and traces how they initiate and elevate their agenda. The model is tested on an original dataset covering more than 5.5-million tweets by political parties and MPs, coupled with over 750,000 news articles and 419,000 parliamentary questions in the United Kingdom and Denmark from 2015 to 2022. Results show how parties and their MPs can proactively redirect the attention of other actors through strategic planning and orchestrated actions. By theorizing and empirically testing the implicit notion that parties can proactively initiate discussions, this article has important implications for political agenda setting.