Twitter is not for Everyone

Sammanfattning: Politicians and public relations practitioners need to consciously and strategically communicate on Twitter not only during elections, but also during incumbency. However; previous approaches to PR failed to offer candidates successful long-term strategies. In addition, political PR research underestimated the influence of the characteristics of Twitter on the tone and the rhetoric of political communication. Thus, the purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore the PR strategy of the Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on Twitter to fill these gaps. Tweets posted on his profile during his first year in office have been analysed and their interpretations validated by interviews with public relations practitioners in charge of his digital communication. Matteo Renzi's public relations strategy resulted made up of branding, media agentry, communication of delivery and interaction with citizens. The success of Matteo Renzi on Twitter may be related to the extent the characteristics of the platform, such as humour and informal communication, are close to his core brand associations. Therefore, it may be inferred that the characteristics of the main social media channel in a political PR strategy need to match the brand, the identity and the person of the politician. The analysis here reported illustrated that Twitter may be better suitable tool for community-minded, informative and ironic leaders. However, it also opened up further questions about the impact of social media on the personalisation of politics and about the obstacles to effective interaction between politicians and citizens.