The Common Core debate on Twitter and the rise of the activist public

Abstract

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were adopted with broad bipartisan backing in 46 states in 2010. Yet by 2015 they had become a lightning rod for a range of critiques about the education system while public support declined precipitously and became increasingly partisan. Not coincidentally, the CCSS were also the first major education initiative to play out in a social media environment. In this study we used mixed methods to analyze the debate surrounding the Common Core on Twitter for a 6-month period in 2013–2014, with a focus on the central participants in the discussion and the linguistic argumentation they used. We found an active debate about the Common Core on Twitter, consisting of about 190,000 tweets from 53,000 distinct actors. Using social network analysis, we identified three major factions in the debate, which represented supporters of the CCSS, educators who opposed the CCSS, and a large contingent of opponents from outside of the education industry. We also detected that many of the most prolific participants from outside of education were individual activists, rather than members of formal advocacy organizations. Analyzing the content of the debate amongst the most influential participants, we found it to be less about the CCSS themselves than a proxy war about larger education-related social issues. Finally, through an examination of the language of the tweets, we determined that the central members used a form of linguistic argumentation called ‘politicalspeak,’ which they employed to rouse their followers and influence the public discourse. Thus, the tactics of the factions on Twitter, particularly opponents of the CCSS from outside of education, employed both issue framing and linguistic strategies to establish a dominant narrative. Based on these findings, we argue that the discourse on Twitter at the time of the study was less of a means to introduce new ideas and perspectives, then it was amplify the voices of a broader array of public activists seeking to influence the direction of public policy.