Influencers in Parliament? Platform Pressures and Normative Conflict in Political Social Media Adoption

Even as platformization reshapes communication practices across professional fields, it is not a given that professional norms adapt accordingly. The field of politics is no exception. This study examines how parliamentary teams navigate incentives to embrace social media platforms in their everyday communications work, shedding light on how new media practices are normatively understood in the political field. Drawing on fieldwork in the French Assemblée Nationale and a descriptive mapping of MPs’ social media presences, I find that even as digital communications practices have converged, norms around the legitimacy of social media use in parliamentary work have not. On the one hand, engagement metrics provide guidance in the face of uncertainty, becoming normalized as markers of professionalism. On the other hand, institutional norms reject overt pursuits of ‘virality’. This creates a normative double bind for politicians, at once incentivizing them to adapt to platform demands and punishing communications that maximize metrics at any cost. Depending on party culture and institutional position, politicians have different levels of leeway in resolving this conflict. The study highlights that even as platformization incentivizes convergent practices, professional norms do not necessarily follow the same trajectory, explaining divergent uses of social media in the political field.