Legislators produced a whole lot more tweets than laws this year, according to new data.
Questo, da un new report on Congress’ social media usage nel 2020 by Quorum, a DC-based public affairs company tracking social media usage by public officials, spiega:
“Congress was increasingly active overall on social media in 2020, but did much less legislating than usual. Nel 2019, Congress tweeted 50 times for every one bill that was introduced and 2,489 times per one bill enacted. Nel 2020, that balance shifted dramatically: Congress tweeted 98 times per bill introduced and 17,912 times per bill enacted.”
That’s a pretty stunning breakdown, but it makes some sense: After the pandemic rocked the nation in March, it simply wasn’t safe for members to be out glad-handing constituents or visiting businesses the way they had before Covid-19. Così, as Quorum’s data shows, they tweeted more.
And there’s an interesting partisan breakdown when it comes to who posted more on which platform this year.
Of the 500,000-plus total Twitter posts in the last year, quasi 63% of the tweets came from Democrats, even though the top Twitter user overall is Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, followed by Democratic Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts.
Republicans contributed slightly more than half of the posts on Facebook but they make up nearly 62% of YouTube posts. The top YouTuber was also Markey (his campaign leaned heavily on hyper-trendy social media during his bitter primary fight, if you couldn’t tell).
He’s followed by Arkansas’ GOP You. Tom Cotton.
As Quorum points out, social media became one of the main places where legislation was debated during the pandemic: “While the volume of legislation was low, its impact was significant and Twitter replaced floor debates in 2020. Memes and designed graphics replaced the classic floor posters you spot on CSPAN.”
Il punto: Like the rest of us this year, Congress became more “in linea” than ever.
