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• golbeck@gmail.com

• Paper to appear in JASIST (Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology)