The National Network of U.S. State Legislators on Twitter
Published in Political Science Research and Methods, 1900
A lot of attention has been paid to studying the online activity of the members of the United States Congress. This scrutiny has not been extended to state legislators. Very few studies exist which catalogue why state legislators connect and communicate with one another online in the ways they do. Inspired by this question and building on studies which have analyzed online communication of members of national legislatures, this paper aims to systematically analyze state legislator relationships in the online environment. We collect original data for 4000+ legislators and study patterns of connection and communication of state legislators on Twitter. The results from this study will help better understand what motivates tie formation in the online environment and if these patterns of connection conform to or can predict offline relationships. We test the impact of variables such as party affiliation, state, chamber, cohort, gender, and policy area focus on the organization of these online networks. We look at three main types of networks that can arise due to participation on Twitter - follower, retweets and mentions. We also aggregate the ties to infer dynamics between states.
Recommended citation: Gopal, Ishita, Taegyoon Kim, Nitheesha Nakka, Jeffrey Harden, Frederick Boehmke, Bruce Desmarais. "The National Network of U.S. State Legislators on Twitter." Political Science Research and Methods. Forthcoming.