Twitter Adoption and Activity in U.S. Legislatures: A 50-State Study

Abstract

This study draws inspiration from the literature on Twitter adoption and activity in U.S. legislatures, applying predictions from those limited studies to all 7,378 politicians serving across 50 American state legislatures in the fall of 2015. Tests of bivariate association carried out for individual states lead to widely varying results, indicating an underlying diversity of legislative environments. However, a pooled multivariate analysis for all 50 states indicates that constituents per legislator, the youth and educational attainment of a district, legislative professionalism, being a woman, sitting in the upper chamber, leadership, and legislative inexperience are significantly and positively associated with Twitter adoption and current Twitter use. Controlling for these factors, neither legislator party, nor majority status, nor partisan instability, nor district income is significantly related to either Twitter adoption or current Twitter use. Although women are more likely than men to adopt and use Twitter, the most active users narrowly tend to be men. Finally, most variation in social media adoption and activity by legislators remains unexplained, leaving considerable room for further theoretical development.