Nitheesha Nakka

Nitheesha Nakka

she/her

PhD in Political Science and Social Data Analytics

Sitemap

A list of all the posts and pages found on the site. For you robots out there is an XML version available for digesting as well.

Pages

Posts

Future Blog Post

less than 1 minute read

Published:

This post will show up by default. To disable scheduling of future posts, edit config.yml and set future: false.

Blog Post number 4

less than 1 minute read

Published:

This is a sample blog post. Lorem ipsum I can’t remember the rest of lorem ipsum and don’t have an internet connection right now. Testing testing testing this blog post. Blog posts are cool.

Blog Post number 3

less than 1 minute read

Published:

This is a sample blog post. Lorem ipsum I can’t remember the rest of lorem ipsum and don’t have an internet connection right now. Testing testing testing this blog post. Blog posts are cool.

Blog Post number 2

less than 1 minute read

Published:

This is a sample blog post. Lorem ipsum I can’t remember the rest of lorem ipsum and don’t have an internet connection right now. Testing testing testing this blog post. Blog posts are cool.

Blog Post number 1

less than 1 minute read

Published:

This is a sample blog post. Lorem ipsum I can’t remember the rest of lorem ipsum and don’t have an internet connection right now. Testing testing testing this blog post. Blog posts are cool.

portfolio

publications

Attention to the COVID-19 Pandemic on Twitter: Partisan Differences among U.S. State Legislators

Published in Legislative Studies Quarterly, 2021

State Legislators, X, Covid19, Partisanship

Recommended citation: Kim, Taegyoon, Nitheesha Nakka, Ishita Gopal, Bruce A. Desmarais, Abigail Mancinelli, Jeffrey J. Harden, Hyein Ko, and Frederick J. Boehmke. (2021). "Attention to the COVID‐19 Pandemic on Twitter: Partisan Differences Among US State Legislators." Legislative studies quarterly. 47(4):1023-1041.
Download Paper

Paper Title Number 4

Published in GitHub Journal of Bugs, 2024

This paper is about fixing template issue #693.

Recommended citation: Your Name, You. (2024). "Paper Title Number 3." GitHub Journal of Bugs. 1(3).
Download Paper

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.

Research

Published in , 1900

Published Papers

  • An Evaluation of the Google Perspective API by Race and Gender
    Web Science Conference Proceedings 2025
    Nitheesha Nakka
    Read the Paper
    Abstract Research on American politicians demonstrates that minority politicians often face higher rates of uncivil speech online. While previous studies have focused on federal representatives, local politicians engage more frequently with constituents, increasing the risk of online and offline violence. These imminent threats to state-level officials highlight the need for tools that can accurately measure and assess the nature of toxic discourse faced by local politicians, making algorithmic evaluation essential for understanding these interactions. To this end, this study evaluates the Google Perspective API, a widely used machine learning algorithm that quantifies toxicity. This study assesses its performance of the API across various race and gender subgroups. Using a dataset of one million tweets directed at state legislators across all 50 states in January 2021, I identify significant gender and racial discrepancies in the algorithm’s performance. Specifically, the API demonstrates better performance in predicting toxicity toward men than toward women. The racial discrepancies are slightly more nuanced with the API performing better for some races and not others. This research underscores the importance of algorithmic validation and has implications for studies of algorithmic performance, online harassment and political communication.
  • Digitally Accountable Public Representation (DAPR)
    Nature Scientific Data 2025
    Cassandra Yuehong Tai, Nitheesha Nakka, Khushi Navin Patni, Sarah Michele Rajtmajer, Kevin Munger, Yu-Ru Lin, Bruce A. Desmarais
    Read the Paper
    Abstract We introduce the Digitally Accountable Public Representation (DAPR) Database, an innovative archive that systematically tracks and analyzes the online communication of federal, state, and local elected officials in the U.S. Focusing on X/Twitter and Facebook, the current database includes 28,834 public officials, their demographic information, and 5,769,904 X/Twitter posts along with 450,972 Facebook posts, dating from January 2020 to December 2024. The database integrates three interconnected datasets: metadata on elected officials, weekly aggregated X data, and weekly aggregated Facebook data. These weekly aggregated datasets provide detailed insights into platform activity, capturing officials’ posting volumes, engagement metrics, and content trends. Our framework ensures ongoing database expansion by incorporating new officials and platforms, maintaining its relevance and research utility for analyzing officials’ digital communication.
  • Navigating Hate Speech: Bridging LLMs and Human Expertise in Public Officials’ Online Communication
    ICWSM Cyber Social Threats Conference Proceedings 2025
    Nitheesha Nakka, Isaac Pollert, Lingyu Fuca, Cassandra Yuehong Tai
    Read the Paper
    Abstract The rise in hate speech targeting minority communities underscores the urgent need for effective tools to detect and address harmful content in digital communication. We examine over 3 million tweets posted by state legislators between 2020 and 2021, focusing on messages directed at Asian communities. To address the nuanced nature of hate speech, we develop three comprehensive definitions for identifying hate speech. With a humanin- the-loop approach, our fine-tuned BERT-NLI model achieved improved classification performance. We find that while anti-Asian tweets comprise only a small portion of legislators' total tweets, there are distinct geographic patterns across states. In addition, the frequency of posting pro-Asian or anti-Asian tweets is significantly influenced by legislators' demographics. By combining advanced computational methods with human oversight, this study advances efforts to address sensitive issues in politicians' digital discourse with greater precision and accountability.
  • The National Network of U.S. State Legislators on Twitter
    Political Science Research and Methods 2024
    Ishita Gopal, Taegyoon Kim, Nitheesha Nakka, Jeffrey Harden, Frederick Boehmke, Bruce Desmarais
    Read the Paper
    Abstract 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.
  • Attention to the COVID-19 Pandemic on Twitter: Partisan Differences among U.S. State Legislators
    Legislative Studies Quarterly 2022
    Taegyoon Kim, Nitheesha Nakka, Ishita Gopal, Bruce Desmarais, Abigail Mancinelli, Jeffrey Harden, Hyein Ko, Frederick Boehmke
    Read the Paper
    Abstract Subnational governments in the United States have taken the lead on many aspects of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Variation in government activity across states offers the opportunity to analyze responses in comparable settings. We study a common and informative activity among state officials—state legislators’ attention to the pandemic on Twitter. We find that legislators’ attention to the pandemic strongly correlates with the number of cases in the legislator’s state, the national count of new deaths, and the number of pandemic-related public policies passed within the legislator’s state. Furthermore, we find that the degree of responsiveness to pandemic indicators differs significantly across political parties, with Republicans exhibiting weaker responses, on average. Lastly, we find significant differences in the content of tweets about the pandemic by Democratic and Republican legislators, with Democrats focused on health indicators and impacts, and Republicans focused on business impacts and opening the economy.

talks

teaching

Teaching experience 1

Undergraduate course, University 1, Department, 2014

This is a description of a teaching experience. You can use markdown like any other post.

Teaching experience 2

Workshop, University 1, Department, 2015

This is a description of a teaching experience. You can use markdown like any other post.