Twitter Use by the US Congress
Jennifer Golbeck, Justin Grimes, Anthony Rogers
College of Information StudiesHCIL
• Users post 140 character updates called “tweets”• Can “follow” other users• Over 100 million registered users
Talk is cheap, except when Congress does it. -Cullen Hightower
Who is Tweeting?
DemocratRepublicanIndependent
Visualizations created in NodeXL
What are they saying?
• Get all the tweets we can• Read them
~6,000 tweets• Analyze the content
Categories
• Informational• Locations and Activities and Official Business• External and Internal Communication• Requesting action and Fundraising• Personal Messages
JimDeMint: Why I voted against Hillary Clinton http://tinyurl.com/cxpclzMarkWarner: Stopped for a quick bite to eat at Sting-Rays in Cape Charles. timryan: I’m now voting for the Emer Extended Unempl compensation act of 2008. How cajn we as a country, at a time when American’s are getting squeez. mlfudge: @williamspa I will certainly do my best to help the 11th Congressional District and fulfill the promise to continue Stephanies work!
Bottom Line
• The vast majority of tweets read like sound bites– Self promotion– Soapbox-style position statements
…but there is potential!
• Some back and forth debates• Some very useful communication between
representatives and constituents• Some tweets improving transparency
Recommendations
• Use Twitter to communicate, not to broadcast• Serve your Twitter constituents, not yourself;
provide insightful and useful information• These rules apply to everyone – not just
Congress!
Questions?
• Jennifer Golbeck• [email protected]
• Paper to appear in JASIST (Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology)
Recommended
