Receiving or Rejecting Aid: The Influence of Populist Twitter Rhetoric in Aid-Recipient Countries

Project Summary

Foreign aid officials are increasingly using Twitter (X) to signal their negotiating positions and leverage their networks to influence negotiation outcomes. This project uses computational analysis of data from Twitter (X) API to investigate how recipient officials are using this social media platform to influence donor-recipient negotiations in eleven African countries—Burundi, DRC, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Sudan, Uganda, and Tanzania—between 2018 and 2022. Findings from this project will have implications for international aid policies that aim to mitigate violent conflict and for scholarship’s understanding of the changing power dynamics between aid donor and recipient governments.

Principal Investigator(s)

• Susanna Campbell, American University

• Karsten Donnay, University of Zurich (Co-PI)

• Abrehet Gebremedhin, American University (Co-PI)

• Haley Swedlund, Radboud University (Co-PI)

Project Manager(s)

• Abrehet Gebremedhin, American University

Project Status

Active