Twitter: Where Republicans Are the Majority
BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, September 23 2009
Politico's Kenneth P. Vogel covers a new Congressional Research Service report which finds that congressional Republicans out-tweeted their Democratic counterparts during two one-week periods this summer, one week while Congress was in session and one when it was in recess. The total amount of Twitter data behind the report isn't exactly staggering. CRS tallied just under 1,200 tweets all told, that from 535 members of Congress (though only about a third of the House and Senate are actually on Twitter). But the report does offer some fun peeks into how Congress is adopting Twitter, like:
- Both in and out of session, nearly half of all tweets are of the press-release variety (43% in session and 46% out of session).
- The number of "position-taking tweets" posted by Senators and Representatives doubled from the recess test week to the in-session test week, from 45 to 102. Personal tweets stayed just about steady, at 24 to 21.
- About 1.4% of congressional tweets were responses to other tweets.
- And members of Congress send more tweets on Thursday than any other day of the week.
Congressional Republicans' newly- documented Twitter dominance isn't altogether inexplicable. When it comes to the House, at least, being in the minority means both less official work to do and the need for untraditional outlets for getting your voice heard. Still, it has some on the left brooding. AMERICAblogs' John Aravosis laments what he sees as the Democrats ceding of their online advantage."We had, still have, a great thing going," he blogs. "And Democrats seem all too willing to let it all slip away." But Aravosis should maybe take some comfort in the words of Rep. John Culberson. Twitter isn't the be all end all, the Texas Republican tells Politico, "I have shifted in recent weeks to Facebook. I’m personally convinced that Facebook will be the pivot point for the next American Revolution, which will organize itself digitally over the Internet and will express itself at the next election.”