Social media are critical tools offering connections between political actors, voters, and journalists. However, existing scholarship rarely assesses how user engagement differs by platform, content, and function of the post. We examine Facebook (n = 938), Instagram (n = 258), and Twitter (n = 1771) posts by the leaders of three major political parties in Canada during the 2019 Federal Election. Across all three platforms, Liberal Leader Trudeau’s posts receive the most engagement. On Twitter, attack posts receive slightly more engagement and interaction posts receive less engagement, compared with other platforms. While policy posts produce lower levels of engagement across platforms, Facebook is distinctive in yielding the lowest levels of user engagement on policy posts. In sum, our findings suggest that political leaders should tailor the content of their social media posts to different platforms.

社交媒体是在政治角色，选民和新闻记者之间建立联系的重要工具。但是，现有的奖学金很少会根据帖子的平台，内容和功能来评估用户参与度的差异。我们考察了Facebook（n = 938），Instagram（n = 258）和Twitter（n= 1771）由加拿大三个主要政党的领导人在2019年联邦大选期间发布。在这三个平台上，自由党领袖特鲁多的职位参与度最高。与其他平台相比，在Twitter上，攻击帖子获得的参与度略高，而互动帖子获得的参与度则更低。虽然政策职位在各个平台上的参与度较低，但Facebook的独特之处在于其政策层面的用户参与度最低。总而言之，我们的发现表明，政治领导人应根据不同的平台量身定制其社交媒体帖子的内容。