Abstract
Understanding how political leaders use social media during election campaigns is a growing area of research, with existing literature focusing on single election examinations of platform usage (Smith 2021). This paper instead conducts a longitudinal examination of political leadership on Twitter/X at the 2015, 2017 and 2019 UK general elections, focusing on the different ways in which leaders portray their competence, ordinariness and authenticity. In analysing 2694 posts during the short campaign period by the various leaders of the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats and the SNP, it enables the examination of both changing social media behaviours and individual constructions of leadership under the same party label.