Tweeting is Leading: How Senators Communicate and Represent in the Age of Twitter Annelise Russell

Abstract

Every U.S. Senator is on Twitter and every U.S. Senator pursues rhetorical agendas. Senators pursue rhetorical agendas as policy wonks, constituent servants, or partisan warriors. This is the central thesis of Annelise Russell’s new book Tweeting is Leading, the latest contribution to the renowned Oxford Studies in Digital Politics series. In Tweeting is Leading, Russell uses a wealth of content analytic and Senate demographic data to analyze and understand how federal elected officials use social media for their political public relations efforts. Dr. Russell is an assistant professor of public policy at the University of Kentucky. Social media such as Twitter provide politicians the opportunity to bypass media gatekeepers and communicate directly with key publics. By 2013, every member of the U.S. Senate had a Twitter presence although the frequency of usage varied. For instance, Russell found that in 2013, the average senator tweeted 675 times but this ranged from a total of 23 to 2,272 tweets (p. 69). Russell collected data in both 2013, the first non-election year of universal adoption, and 2015, a second election off-year, to analyze frequency of tweeting, determinants of social media behavior, and content strategies from Senate accounts. Electoral off-years were chosen as the sample to focus on government communication when senators are not actively campaigning. Overall frequencies increased from 2013 to 2015 highlighting the increased importance of social media for strategic political communication. Russell argues that “the use of Twitter is now a normal part of lawmakers’ routines and seen as a common, if not necessary, element of lawmaking” (p. 51). One important finding was that there are not consistent variables explaining which senators use Twitter more frequently. There were not consistent patterns in how variables such as gender, age, partisanship, prior electoral performance, committee leader status, or seniority influence Twitter communication frequency.