Congress Twitter Research Press Release

Twitter Use by the U.S. Congress Jennifer Golbeck1 Justin Grimes2 Anthony Rogers3 {golbeck, jgrimes2,azgul}@umd.edu September 9, 2009 With the buzz surrounding Twitter have come claims that this technology will transform the way people share information, and that public figures should start tweeting. Researchers at the University of Maryland, College Park studied the way Twitter is being used by legislators, particularly by members of the United States Congress. Their study reviewed the content of over 5000 tweets of 69 members of Congress who are actively using Twitter. According to the analysis, conducted in the Human-Computer Interaction Lab and the Center for Information Policy and E-Government in the College of Information Studies, it seems that much the usage might be characterized as selfpromoting, rather than informing the public or collaborating with staff and other members of Congress.. Congresspeople use Twitter to communicate much of the same type of information their offices would share in other media. They post links to news articles, blog posts, and descriptions of upcoming activities, and use the Twitter posts (tweets) like titles for mini press releases. Congresspeople also use Twitter in the stereotypical way, posting about daily activities and events like announcing that they are in a meeting, describing what they are having for dinner, and relating their daily workout regimen. These two types of posts are the vast majority - roughly 80% - of all Congressional Twitter content.Only 7% of the tweets were related to citizen communication, 5% to official business, 4% related to personal messages, 3% requesting action, 1% to internal communication and less than 1% contain information related to fundraising. While the researchers found some very interesting back-and-forth debates between members of Congress and some public, direct communication with citizens, this was a minority of the content. Twitter has the potential to be used to allow citizens to know what their Congressperson is doing and how the legislative process is functioning at any given moment. Moreover, researchers and Congressional watchdogs could aggregate the posts and analyze them for patterns over time. However, this is not the current state of Twitter use and, if Twitter is to become a vehicle for government transparency, it will have to arise from a significant change in Congresspeople’s behavior.

1 co-Director,

Human-Computer Interaction Lab, Assistant Director, Center for Information Policy and E-Government, University of Maryland, College Park 2 Ph.D. Student, Center for Information Policy and E-Government, College of Information Studies University of Maryland, College Park 3 Undergraduate Research Assistant, University of Maryland, College Park

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