The Congressional Research Service notes that “all records generated by a Member of Congress in the course of his or her service in the House or Senate are the personal property of the Member.”. Likes remain the most common form of reaction to congressional Facebook posts, although others make up a substantial share. When a legislator retweets a tweet from another account, the Twitter API only provides retweet counts for the original tweet, and does not distinguish between retweets of the original post and the legislator’s retweeted version. [post_type] => resources But in February 2016, Facebook introduced new “reactions” – including “love,” “sad,” “haha” and “wow” – as alternatives to the traditional like. [post_name__in] => Array Your email address will not be published. [update_post_meta_cache] => 1 [feed] => draws: “The Senate’s Internet Services and Technology Resources Usage Rules prohibit any linkage from a Member’s official website or social media to any campaign website or social media.”. Social media plays a major role in today’s politics. Account totals and monthly changes in ranking were last updated on October 27, 2020. [primary_id_column] => Substantive differences in the Facebook and Twitter platforms – as well as idiosyncracies in the data they make available to outside parties – can complicate efforts to compare lawmaker behaviors on the two platforms. Researchers identified every account used by members of Congress by building upon a preexisting list with original searches. Republican lawmakers tend to receive more engagement on their posts than Democrats when viewed at the level of the median lawmaker. [category_name] => [pagename] => Republican lawmakers tend to be less active posters and have fewer of these highly successful accounts, but their posts tend to receive more audience engagement at the level of individual members. Most have Twitter accounts, but it remains an open question whether Senators or their staff pay much, if any, attention to incoming Tweets since they have no way of identifying whether the sender is one of their constituents or someone from a distant part of the … But although the median Democratic lawmaker is more active on both platforms, through the first five months of 2020 the typical Republican received greater levels of audience engagement (as measured by reactions, shares, favorites and retweets) on both Facebook and Twitter. Here’s the line the Senate Ethics Committee draws: “The Senate’s Internet Services and Technology Resources Usage Rules prohibit any linkage from a Member’s official website or social media to any campaign website or social media.”. But, until then, if you’re a member of Congress, it’s probably best to just keep your personal (or campaign) and professional lives separate on social media. Use them to good advantage. This report includes retweets when counting the total number of Twitter posts from a given lawmaker, but tracking engagement with retweets is more challenging. If a Capitol Hill figure gets caught in a scandal, reporters linger on the accounts, waiting for the inevitable statement. ) ) [title] => So, what happens after a lawmaker leaves public service? [cat] => [post_parent__in] => Array ) ( [no_found_rows] => View all posts by Omer Causey. [paged] => 0 Engagement with lawmaker retweets. [error] => ) But when viewed as a whole – that is, by examining all the shares, retweets, favorites and reactions to congressional social media posts – Democrats receive the bulk of that engagement. Since Congressional staffers are government employees, their time is “an official resource of Congress.”. In particular, mentions of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings were associated with consistently higher engagement for members of both parties. There have been striking ebbs and flows in the ways congressional social media use has unfolded over time. This collection of social media posts can also provide insights into the particular issues that are unique to each party. Curious to know which non-governmental and non-media Twitter accounts Members of Congress follow? Well I guess I am back to having no followers. That one links to Harris.Senate.gov. [day] => 0 But why? The complaint was filed by Surjewala, demanding registration of a criminal … [tag__not_in] => Array Posts mentioning certain key terms or individuals are associated with above-average audience engagement in the form of favorites, reactions, shares and retweets. Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy ranks right below Speaker Ryan at 15th, while Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi ranks 31st overall. Twitter has become such an integral medium for political communication that, according to our count, 97 percent of members of Congress now have an official Twitter presence. Those tweets, and even that handle are the property of the member. [post__in] => Array Researchers were unable to comprehensively assess this overlap for every single member in this analysis. 1. [post__not_in] => Array , elected officials must “ensure that their official position (i.e., representative, congressman, congresswoman) is clearly stated in the account name.” For example, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s juggernaut Twitter account is @AOC and lists her as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you. The Senate has different ethics rules than the House. Currently, he has nearly 175,000 followers on that handle. [post_parent] => When slightly different variations of the same word(s) appeared, researchers collapsed them into their most common form. Comprehensive contact information, dialogue, and legislation across the European Union. All 535 Members of Congress have official Twitter accounts and many create additional campaign accounts when they are running for re-election. Learn how your comment data is processed. Comparing audience “reactions” across platforms. [year] => 0 ( In the 116th Congress, the 10% of members with the most followers on Facebook and Twitter have received more than three-quarters of all favorites, reactions, shares and retweets on these platforms. The congressional social media landscape, Congress on Social Media 2015-2020 Dataset. But the report focuses at times on the behaviors of all lawmakers from a particular party or a subset of highly active members in order to highlight the extremes of congressional social media use. The resulting dataset contains nearly 1.5 million Facebook posts from 1,388 congressional Facebook accounts and over 3.3 million tweets from 1,362 congressional Twitter accounts. ( ) Unsurprisingly, Congress was slow to outline official policies for social media use—this is the same group who nearly went cross-eyed when they brought Mark Zuckerberg before the Senate Committees on Judiciary and Commerce for a hearing. Ocasio-Cortez also has multiple Instagram pages. [post_author] => 1 [subpost] => Sometimes they just rename it. Therefore, the median serves as a useful baseline for measuring the behavior of the “typical” member of Congress and tracking widespread trends across Congress as a whole. The data analyzed in this report covers the time period Jan. 1, 2015, through May 31, 2020. ( As a collective, the 116th Congress maintains over 2,000 active official, campaign and personal accounts on Facebook and Twitter (not counting institutional accounts that periodically change hands, such as committee chair or leadership accounts) with over a quarter-billion total followers between them.