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NEW: We’ve collected every tweet and Facebook post from every member of Congress since 2015 – thousands of accounts and millions of posts in total. Here’s what we’ve found: /1 https://pewrsr.ch/30kVzoL
Compared with four years ago, Congress is now more active on social media – especially on Twitter. Tweeting is up 81%, and Facebook posts are up 48%. There’s been a notable increase since Trump’s impeachment and COVID /2
Congress’ social media audiences have also grown substantially. The typical (median) Republican has more than doubled their followers on Twitter since 2016; Democrats’ followers have tripled. Both parties are up by around 50% on Facebook /3
And Congress’ followers are engaging more with their posts – compared with 2016, the typical member of Congress now gets over 12 times as many favorites and 6 times as many retweets on their average tweet. Engagement is also up on Facebook by around 50% /4
A small number of popular lawmakers in each party receive most of the engagement given to Congress as a whole. The 10% most-followed members of Congress generate over three-quarters of all favorites, reactions, retweets and shares on Facebook and Twitter /5
A lot of these members are former presidential candidates. In the Republican Party, Ted Cruz and Mitt Romney have the largest audiences on Twitter and Facebook, respectively. Among Democrats, Bernie Sanders has the most followers on both platforms /6
Overall, Democrats receive the bulk of engagement on both platforms – roughly 3/4 of all favorites/reactions and 2/3 of all retweets/shares. But this is partly because they produce more posts than Republicans. When you examine individual posts, things look a little different /7
On their average post, the typical Republican in Congress now gets more engagement than the typical Democrat. This didn’t used to be true. Republicans crossed this threshold for the first time in October 2018 on Facebook. They overtook Democrats on Twitter a year later /8
Over the past five years, certain events have been associated with large spikes in social media engagement in each party. During these events, the typical lawmaker’s average post sometimes received an order of magnitude more favorites/retweets/reactions/shares /9
The biggest spike in social media engagement for Democrats happened during the 2016 “no bill, no break” sit-in to demand progress on gun control legislation. For Republicans, it was during Trump’s impeachment in the House at the end of last year /10
Certain keywords also appear to resonate with Congress’ audiences and have had a broad multiplier effect in particular years. Republicans that mentioned “Adam Schiff” in 2019 and Democrats that mentioned “ #NoBillNoBreak” in 2016 got over +500% engagement on average /11
Some of the biggest engagement boosts in both parties came from terms related to Trump’s impeachment, Planned Parenthood and Kavanaugh’s nomination. Mentioning political opponents also boosted engagement (e.g. DeVos/Trump/McConnell for Dems; Schiff/Pelosi/Clinton for Reps) /12
Lawmakers in each party also seem to favor (or avoid) mentioning certain terms in their social media posts. 96% of all Democrats in Congress have mentioned the phrase “equal pay” at least once in the past five years, and 85% of Republicans have used the term “pro-growth” /13
Other distinctively Democratic terms include “gun safety”, “LGBT” and “workers’ rights”. On the other hand, a majority of Republicans have mentioned “bureaucrats”, “unborn” and “illegal immigrant”, while few Democrats have done the same. /14
These findings are all part of a massive ongoing research effort to track how Congress communicates online – be sure to check out the full report, and stay tuned for more! https://pewrsr.ch/30kVzoL
