Examining the Interconnectedness of State High Court Twitter

• In Event: Courts and the (New) Media

Abstract

Judges have audiences and behave in such a way as to cater to those audiences (Baum 2008). While this theory is commonly studied with an eye to the behavior of federal judges, it is perhaps more suitable for studies of judges on state courts, many of whom must be accessible to a more varied set of audiences in order to remain in office. In the absence of life tenure, judges in the states need to consider their retention at some point; specifically considering what their retention constituency looks like and how to justify their continued tenure on the bench. While retention institutions vary across the states, judicial retention constituencies generally conform to easily identifiable patterns; either judges will be retained via elite audiences (the governor or the legislature), or by the mass public in the state. One way in which judges may reach these audiences is through the use of social media platforms in order to portray themselves in a positive light. Yet, even a cursory glance at the social media behavior of state court judges reveals that many are engaged with a much wider audience, including other judges. Borrowing with the literature on cross-state citations, we leverage a unique dataset of all state high court judges who utilize Twitter to examine the network that exists among them. This will include whom they follow, whom follows them, and what they like and retweet. This analysis allows us to examine the degree of interconnectedness of state high court judges by looking at nonjudicial behavior and identify whom their audience really is.

Authors

• Todd A. Curry, University of Texas at El Paso

• Michael P. Fix, Georgia State University

• Michael K. Romano, Shenandoah University