The social media paradox: Political expression and the bifurcation of bureaucratic values

Bureaucrats’ political activity on social media has received growing attention from various observers who have debated whether such behavior is weakening the bureaucracy’s reputed impartiality, or creating public value by contributing to public discussions. To advance this debate, this article investigates bureaucrats’ political activity on social media with survey data from Canada. Testing hypotheses drawn from four ideal-types depicting different approaches towards social media—imperatively impartial; politically minded, mindfully impartial; megaphone bureaucracy; promiscuously partisan—the empirical results suggest that bureaucrats’ social media activity has led to a paradoxical bifurcation of the bureaucracy into radically different realms of being imperatively impartial and promiscuously partisan. Responding to risk-averse messages from the bureaucracy itself, nonexecutive federal bureaucrats display remarkably low levels of political activity on social media. In contrast, responding to political pressure to promote the government’s messaging, top-ranking federal bureaucrats display high levels of political activity on social media, especially when it comes to partisan content such as reposting official party messages. This social media paradox points to a potentially tragic portrait for the future of governance in the twenty-first century, whereby the integrity of the bureaucracy’s reputed impartiality and the vitality of democratic society, both stand to lose.