Brigid O’Keeffe
Kelsey Klemme
Kelsey Swinnerton
Mini-Biographies
·
Chuck Grassley
o
Republican
o
Began tweeting: November 26th, 2007
o
12,066 following
o
17,252 followers
o
355 total status updates
·
John Kerry
o
Democrat
o
Began tweeting: June 2008
o
2 following
o
3156 followers
o
41 status updates
·
Barbara Boxer
o
Democrat
o
Began Tweeting: August 2008
o
476 following
o
16420 followers
o
133 status updates
·
Tom Latham
o
Republican
o
Began Tweeting: November 2007
o
901 following
o
2436 followers
o
66 status updates
·
Mark Warner
o
Democrat
o
Began Tweeting: July 2007.
o
11735 following
o
11995 followers
o
207 status updates
·
Mark Kirk
o
Republican
o
Began Tweeting: January 2009
o
1059 following
o
2187 followers
o
241 status updates
·
Susan Collins
o
Republican
o
Began Tweeting: January 2009
o
305 following
o
4457 followers
o
109 status updates
·
Keith Ellison
o
Democrat
o
Began Tweeting: March 2008
o
43 following
o
4387 followers
o
242 status updates
Analysis
of Research
Throughout the course of this essay our group will provide an analysis of eight different congressmen and their participation on the popular service, Twitter. Our congressmen include senators Barbara Boxer, John Kerry, Chuck Grassley, Keith Ellison, Mark Kirk, Mark Warner, Collins, and Latham. We will be analyzing the amount of individual participation and the types of communication that were being relayed to the public. The different types of discussion that we will be looking at include: 1) Discussion of local affairs, 2) Invitations related to the congressman, 3) Each individuals’ outlook on policy, 4) References to the individual, 5) References to other sources, 6) Criticisms, 7) Discussions about the party, 8) Interactions with the public, and 9) Miscellaneous streams of communication. We began our data collection on Monday November 2nd, and ended our data collection on Wednesday November 4th. In this period of time the data collected was organized in many of the different ways provided below.
The congressmen and women tweets have been divided into 9 different categories for which they use Twitter as seen below in the table:
|
|
Boxer |
Grassley |
Kerry |
Ellison |
Kirk |
Warner |
Collins |
Latham |
|
Local |
0 |
3 |
2 |
1 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
1 |
|
Join Me |
0 |
2 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
|
Policy |
1 |
0 |
0 |
3 |
0 |
2 |
1 |
1 |
|
Refer-Me |
0 |
1 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
3 |
0 |
3 |
|
Refer-Other |
1 |
0 |
2 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
Criticism |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
Party |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
Interaction |
0 |
2 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
|
Other |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
Grassley by far the is most common Twitter user with most tweets in general; Warner in close second; streams of communication concerning local events, join me, policy, refer me, and interaction are the most commonly used forms of communication for the senators. Senators Kerry, Lathom, and Ellison all have a median level of participation; conversation includes refer other, policy, local, refer me, and criticism. The amount of criticism was small, not many of the senators use Twitter to criticize other people in politics. Senators Boxer, Kirk, and Collins lack participation in all areas; communication includes policy and refer other. They may have joined Twitter as a way for their constituents to voice their opinions to them, however they do not feel they should be communicating back to their constituents through Twitter.
The congressmen and women that we chose to follow did not have that many posts on the service, but we learned how they use Twitter as a form of communication from what they did post. Many of the congressmen posted about local events, such as celebrating the anniversary of a library to them tweeting about public speakers that were in the area. A couple of them even showed their support for an athletic team. We figured that the reason they used a lot of local posts was because since they get re-elected by their immediate surrounding constituents, along with having good views in Congress they also need to show their support for local events to keep themselves involved in their own community. Because congressmen are supposed to bring their constituents views to the table, they want to keep themselves involved in the interests of the people they are representing.
We were surprised by the lack of Join Me related posts that were tweeted; Grassley and Warner were the only two that posted anything inviting their Twitter followers to come to see them. We think that it would be more beneficial for them to post these sorts of things more often so that more people will come and participate, but maybe their personal websites or mass e-mails are more effective means of communication when inviting people to an event.
One category that most of the congressmen had in common was tweeting about their positions on a policy. Ellison had the most posts in this category and posted his positions on Iran and even promised to not vote for the health care bill. Four other congressmen posted their views about policies that they were supporting or opposing as well.
Although the congressmen and women here posted statuses a few times, it is clear that they are not strong Twitter users. We could not find anytime where they communicate specifically to one member that is posting them. Because of their lack of tweets it is possible that they use Twitter as a form of allowing their constituents to contact them, rather than them speaking to their constituents, as shown in the table below.
|
|
Boxer |
Grassley |
Kerry |
Ellison |
Kirk |
Warner |
Collins |
Latham |
|
Insult |
69 |
21 |
2 |
0 |
4 |
2 |
1 |
3 |
|
Critisism-Pol |
3 |
2 |
2 |
88 |
0 |
70 |
44 |
11 |
|
Praise-Pol |
7 |
4 |
95 |
1 |
55 |
7 |
48 |
0 |
|
Conversation |
0 |
12 |
0 |
0 |
41 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
|
Thanks-Congrats |
2 |
1 |
0 |
17 |
2 |
3 |
1 |
0 |
|
Refer |
1 |
29 |
0 |
4 |
0 |
14 |
5 |
10 |
|
Repeat |
4 |
31 |
0 |
5 |
0 |
3 |
0 |
0 |
The table above provides a good selection of what constituents use the Twitter communication board for. We selected these tweets by taking the first 100 samples of constituent tweets, this allowed for a random selection of the tweets for each congressman and woman. Many of the citizens who post on the congressmen and women’s walls often don’t have detailed things to say rather, they give a brief over view of what they are thinking about either an issue or how the member is serving their term overall. As seen in Boxer’s case she had several insults, this could be because of a recent bill that she was supporting about the environment. Many of Grassley’s Tweets came from the “refer and repeat” area. This included several websites that linked you to other topics that Grassley had recently been involved in.
Kerry had a major amount of people praising him on his policy. He recently placed a bill out about the environment, and the constituents were being supportive on their analysis of this bill. The day we collected our data was the day that he presented the bill to congress. Ellison was the exact opposite of Kerry, having many people criticize her recent policy choices. Warner also had a majority of people criticizing him. Collins was split about 50 to 50. This could be because her recent policy choices have been of high controversy that can be pushed to both sides of the democratic and republican line. Latham had very few tweets, this could be because of the lack of followers he has and the small amount of status updates he has put up there.
Through our analysis of this small amount of data we believe that many of the constituents use Twitter as a form of policy praise or criticism. Many times the citizen’s hash out to their congressmen or women saying how they don’t appreciate what they are doing for policy. This is an interesting concept because of the replacement Twitter and other forms of technology have had on letter writing to your congressman or woman. The Twitter website allows the people to be short and quick to their point with no real explanation as to why they feel the way they do. It takes away from what the congressman could be learning from the constituents if they wrote letters. However, that goes both ways, Twitter provides a way for the constituents to say a quick “Good Job” to the congressmen and women without having to write a lengthy letter. Overall the data provided good analysis for the use of Twitter in Congress.
Boyntons.us/~multimedia09/Group Number 5/barbaraboxeroriginal.xlsx
Boyntons.us/~multimedia09/Group Number 5/barbara boxer.xml
Boyntons.us/~multimedia09/Group Number 5/Chuck Grassley.xlsx
Boyntons.us/~multimedia09/Group Number 5/grassley.xml
Boyntons.us/~multimedia09/Group Number 5/JohnKerry.xlsx
Boyntons.us/~multimedia09/Group Number 5/johnkerry.xml
Boyntons.us/~multimedia09/Group Number 5/KeithEllison.xlsx
Boyntons.us/~multimedia09/Group Number 5/keithellison.xml
Boyntons.us/~multimedia09/Group Number 5/mark kirk.xml
Boyntons.us/~multimedia09/Group Number 5/markkirk.xlsx
Boyntons.us/~multimedia09/Group Number 5/mark warner.xml
Boyntons.us/~multimedia09/Group Number 5/markwarner.xlsx
Boyntons.us/~multimedia09/Group Number 5/senatorcollins.xlsx
Boyntons.us/~multimedia09/Group Number 5/senatorcollins.xml
Boyntons.us/~multimedia09/Group Number 5/tom latham.xml
Boyntons.us/~multimedia09/Group Number 5/tomlatham.xlxs