Share @WHO? Authority and Resonance in IO Social Media Communication

Abstract International organizations (IOs) have sharply expanded their use of social media. Platforms such as Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) promise rapid, low-cost dissemination and are now widely treated as tools for engaging diverse IO constituencies. Yet we know little about how effective such communication is, or how it relates to public recognition of IOs’ authority. This paper addresses that gap by examining the public resonance of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) social media communication. We theorize “affirmative resonance” as one pathway through which the WHO can bolster its role as a global health governor by (a) authoritatively calling for or evaluating action at multiple levels of public health, (b) mobilizing personalized communication by WHO officials alongside institutional accounts, and (c) leveraging socio-technological affordances such as visuals and hashtags. While each factor plausibly promotes resonance, social-media-specific strategies—personalization, visualization, and hashtag activism—should shape how audiences receive claims to authority and may interact in systematic ways. A large-N analysis of COVID-19-related WHO posts and retweet numbers shows that authoritative claims, personalization, visuals, and hashtags each increase affirmative resonance on average. Notably, visual content substantially conditions the effect of personalized communication when authority is claimed—consistent with the idea that authenticity shapes how a more personalized communication of political authority is received by online audiences.