tweet acts: how constituents lobby congress via twitter
DESCRIPTION
Twitter is increasingly becoming a medium through which constituents can lobby their elected representatives in Congress about issues that matter to them. Past research has focused on how citizens communicate with each other or how members of Congress (MOCs) use social media in general; our research examines how citizens communicate with MOCs. We contribute to existing literature through the careful examination of hundreds of citizen-authored tweets and the development of a categorization scheme to describe common strategies of lobbying on Twitter. Our findings show that contrary to past research that assumed citizens used Twitter to merely shout out their opinions on issues, citizens utilize a variety of sophisticated techniques to impact political outcomes. The Data: http://repository.iit.edu/handle/10560/3057 The Paper: http://repository.iit.edu/handle/10560/3195TRANSCRIPT
Tweet Acts: How Constituents Lobby Congress via Twitter
Libby Hemphill (@libbyh)
Andrew Roback (@andrew0writer)
Illinois Institute of Technology
Situating the study
Citizens, Public Officials, and Social Media
How do citizens and elected officials engage one another online? Officials
Hemphill, L., Otterbacher, J., and Shapiro, M.A. (2013) What’s Congress Doing on Twitter? Proceedings of the 2013 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, San Antonio, TX.
Otterbacher, J., Shapiro, M.A., Hemphill, L. (2013) Interacting or Just Acting? A Case Study of European, Korean, and American Politicians’ Interactions with the Public on Twitter. Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia, 12(1), 5-20.
Citizens Roback, A. and Hemphill, L. (2013) “I’d have to vote
against you”: Issue Campaigning via Twitter. Extended Abstracts of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, San Antonio, TX.
Citizens and Social Media How do citizens and public officials engage one another online? Shout opinions (Parmelee and Bichard, 2011) Talk to other citizens (Mascara, Black, and Goggins,
2012) Provide information (Golbeck, Grimes, and Rodgers,
2010; Hemphill, Otterbacher, and Shapiro, 2013)
Contributions from this paper Evidence that citizens are actually trying to effect change
Codebook for analyzing lobbying tweets
Training data for automated coding algorithm
Do they really just shout opinions?
Speech Acts: Doing things with words directives attempt to get the listener to do something
commissives commit the speaker to a course of action
representatives serve to report on the state of the
world
expressives express a speaker's emotional state
declarations change the state of a person or object
questions attempt to solicit information from the hearer
Data: Do citizens talk to congress?
Data
76,454 tweets43,079 users556 Congressional targets
2011 Oct Dec Feb 2012 Apr Jun Aug Oct Dec 2013
Obama's "Four Part Plan" speech1/29/2013
Fiscal cliff deadline12/31/2012
Sandy Hook
12/14/2012
Congressional Report on gun control
11/14/2012
Election Day11/6/2012
Obama-Romney debate gun control
10/16/2012
Sikh Temple
8/5/2012
Aurora theater
7/20/2012
House holds A.G. Holder in contempt
6/28/2012
Obama announces end of deportation of DREAMers6/15/2012
SOPA/PIPA Blackout1/18/2012
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) introduces SOPA10/26/2011
Issue Hashtags Tweets Users
Immigration reform
#immigration 4845 3083
#dreamact 2591 1838
#dreamers 3175 2495
Federal budget and sequester
#budget 13,249 8767
#fiscalcliff 978 674
#sequestration 914 647
Gun control #guncontrol 1743 733
#2ndamendment
1443 1014
#nra 1819 747
Internet freedom
#sopa 36,985 21,265
#pipa 25,009 15,633
#cispa 5498 3712
Total 76,454* 43,079*
Analysis: what are citizens trying to do when they talk to congress?
Data analysis
Iterative coding on 300 tweets (268 unique)
625 additional tweetsCodebook and data:
http://repository.iit.edu/handle/10560/3057
Frequency of “tweet acts”Speech Act Type
N %
Directive 228 37%
Representative 145 23%
Expressive 100 16%
Questions 90 14%
N/A 48 8%
Commissive 14 2%
Tweet Acts
Tweet act SA Type
N %
Directly oppose/support D 108 17Promotional R 85 14FYI D 75 12Thank you for opposing/supporting
E 66 11
Other N/A 48 8Campaign ad accusation R 46 7Loaded policy question Q 39 6Rhetorical question Q 33 5Please oppose/support D 27 4Disappointed E 20 3General directive D 18 3What is your position? Q 18 3I want a response from you E 14 2I'd have to vote against you
C 14 2
I'm your constituent and I oppose/support
R 9 1
Analogy R 5 1
Doing things with tweets
C = Commissive
D = directive
E = expressive
R = Representative
Q = Question
Directive
Brendan Edwards@ShinerRock
@repkenmarchant @johncornyn @kaybaileyhutch Don't use cybersecurity threats to trample on civil liberties. Stop #CISPA! #CongressTMI
8:07 PM – 9 May 2012
attempt to get the listener to do something
<
Commissive
99% Texas @anonymousatx2
@LamarSmithTX21 my relatives live in your district and i will do everything possible to make sure you are not reelected #NDAA #SOPA #PIPA
12:02 AM – 2 Jan 2012
commit the speaker to a course of action
Representative
Nancy @FairTaxNancy
@RepSteveStivers Voted "yes" in your #AZ #immigration poll. And I am a voting Buckeye here in our great state of #Ohio
4:32 PM – 26 Apr 2012 report on the state of the world
<
Expressive
Ann Guhin @AnnGuhin
@SteveKingIA on @cspan about #immigration he makes ashamed to be an Iowan
1:23 PM – 14 May 2013 express a speaker's emotional state
Question
Aaron Bartlett @aaronazbartlett
@SenJohnMcCain What is your view of President Obama's Announcement today #DreamAct
1:23 PM – 14 May 2013 solicit information from the hearer
Directive
Directly oppose/support
Former Embryo @burnfar
@ChuckSchumer I Demand you OPPOSE S. 3414 and S.A. 2575! These amendments are a WAR ON MY #2ndAmendment! WE ARE MANY & WE ARE WATCHING YOU!
9:30 AM - 31 Jul 2012
Please oppose/support
Richard Ulsh@4xUlsh
@GerryConnolly @MarkWarner I urge you both to please stop or at the very least postpone #Sequestration for the sake of #nationalsecurity6:45 PM – 1 Apr 2012
Representative
Promotion
Maria Ines Zamudio@mizamudio
@LuisGutierrez said “But it is a battle I am still fighting.” of deportations outside #immigration court bit.ly/1336dNm
12:59 PM - 5 May 2013
Campaign Ad Accusation
PatRCO@patrco
@KellyAyotte has been used by @SenJohnMcCain @GrahamBlog & the #NRA. Let her stand alone and explain where SHE stands.4:08 PM - 14 May 2013
Edge Cases
I’d have to vote against you
grant williams@my2bits4u
@JohnBoozman You had your chance to do right you chose not to . You will be punished at the ballot box . You have #nospine #nra
11:09 AM - 18 Apr 2013
I’m your constituent, and I oppose
jsingleterry@jsingleterry
@ChrisVanHollen I live in Rockville, and I urge you to stop cuts to EPA, CDC and NIH. Don't let our lungs go off the #fiscalcliff #callinday
9:28 AM - 20 Feb 2013
Edge casesFYI
FYI
Promotion
Promotion
Do they ever reply?
Ever? Yes. But not really. 76,454 lobbying tweets:
125 replies (0.16%) 34 members (6%)
Tweet Acts
Tweet act SA Type
N %
Directly oppose/support D 108 17Promotional R 85 14FYI D 75 12Thank you for opposing/supporting
E 66 11
Other N/A 48 8Campaign ad accusation R 46 7Loaded policy question Q 39 6Rhetorical question Q 33 5Please oppose/support D 27 4Disappointed E 20 3General directive D 18 3What is your position? Q 18 3I want a response from you E 14 2I'd have to vote against you
C 14 2
I'm your constituent and I oppose/support
R 9 1
Analogy R 5 1
Doing things with tweets
C = Commissive
D = directive
E = expressive
R = Representative
Q = Question
Reflecting on the study
Questions raised
How would we even measure “efficacy” of a lobbying tweet?
What illocutionary force do automated tweets have, and who is the speaker for those tweets?
Questions raised
How should we be citing tweets in publications?
What obligations do researchers have with respect to Twitter’s TOS and brand guidelines?
What responsibilities do we have to users?
Contact us
• Libby Hemphill ([email protected]; @libbyh)
• Andrew Roback ([email protected]; @andrew0writer)
Illinois Institute of Technology
http://www.casmlab.org/projects/publicofficials/
https://twitter.com/CaSMLab/lists
Thank you, Amazon in Education Research Grants Program.
Supplementary Slides
Current Twitter Projects
The Day We Fight Back With Ed Lee (author of The Fight for the Future)
Non-profits Andrew Roback’s examining how NPOs use Twitter to
organize and build support
Fans, fandom, and identity Rizzoli and Isles, #gayzzoli
Social Media Data Toolkit Make social media data available to everyone (read: those
who don’t code)
Directive
General directive
FYI
Directly oppose/support
Please oppose/support
attempt to get the listener to do something
Commissive
I’d have to vote against you…
commit the speaker to a course of action
Representative
Promotional
Campaign ad accusation
Analogy
I’m your constituent, and I oppose
report on the state of the world
Expressive
Thank you for opposing/supporting
I want a response from you
Disappointed
express a speaker's emotional state
Question
What is your position?
Rhetorical question
Loaded policy question
solicit information from the hearer