Digital leadership, Twitter and Pope Francis

Abstract

The Internet reproduces and strengthens our model of social dialog. Just as in the physical world, the online public conversation and, above all, the ideological debate, requires leaders who can be a point of reference to either foster values or contradict them. The concept of leadership has drawn the attention of several studies concerning communication management. Leaders are neither all equal nor do they exercise leadership by means of the same tools. This article studies both the concept of digital leadership as a guide for online conversation and the use that microblogs, such as Twitter, can provide for this purpose. Among several public figures using Twitter, we have focused our study on the @Pontifex account to have an insight into the type of leadership exercised by the Holy Father and the impact of his teaching. The analysis shows that the Pope uses Twitter for catechetical purposes and that he is aware that his message can reach a large audience. Moreover, although interaction between the Pope and his followers on this platform is a fact already known, we have further found that some messages arouse followers' interest more than others do.

Mediatized Catholicism—Minority Voices and Religious Authority in the Digital Sphere

“…In this direction, some studies have also focused on how religious institutions have addressed controversial online practices or interpretations with which they disagree. Campbell (2012b), for example, explored the Vatican's attempts to control its online channels of official communication by disabling the interactive functions of its official YouTube channel in order to preserve its image, Narbona (2016) and Guzek (2015) explored the digital leadership of Pope on Twitter, and Lynch (2015) analyzed the Vatican website. Other studies have focused on the changes in the styles of displaying religious authority in different media environments.…”

Capacities of African-oriented Polish NGOs: a quantitative approach

“…Besides, such an approach has been used in a study of development assistance in Spain, providing evidence of different communities on Facebook, which can be divided into a religious group made of NGOs linked to Catholi- (Edwards, 1999;Fowler, 1997). Although leadership can be considered mostly in the physical domain, it was increasingly recognised that online presence is also becoming crucial for public engagement (Narbona, 2016).…”

Digital Leader-Followership for the Digital Age: A North American Perspective

“…Digital leadership refers to leadership in the core sectors of the knowledge societythe three "C's of computing, communications and content (broadcasting and print), and now multi-media" [52]. Narbona defines digital leadership as "human quality of leadership exercised with digital tools in the virtual world" [53]. Others define it as "doing the right things for the strategic success of digitalization" for organizations that require different mindsets, skillsets, and workplaces [54].…”