Who Are The "Expressive Attentives" of 2020?

• In Event: Zoo Station: Social Media and Political Engagement

Abstract

Many studies show that traditional political participation skews toward the well-educated and financially well-off. But what about those who express their opinions, share information, and call for action on social media. We call this group "expressive attentives," and we are concerned with their differences and similarities with the larger electorate in terms of their demographics, political attitudes, and motivations for using social media to express themselves.

In this paper we present evidence of their characteristics drawn from three sources: polling data compiled by YouGov for the GW Politics Poll of The George Washington University, Twitter metadata and content compiled by the social listening company Crimson Hexagon, and elite interviews conducted by the authors with a number of randomly selected "expressive attentives."

Demographic indicators include gender, ethnicity, income, education, and marital status. Attitudinal indicators include party identification, political ideology, the importance of different issues and positions on these issues, evaluations of various political figures, likelihood of voting, and valuation of political compromise.

The results of this multi-method study paint a detailed picture of the social media universe: who uses it and why. Hypotheses tested include capacity as an explanatory variable (Verba Schlozman and Brady, 1995), as well as affect towards a candidate, ideological belief structures, or merely expressions of performative identity. The results give insight into not just how social media politics is different from traditional politics, but why.

Authors

• Michael Cornfield, The George Washington University

• Todd L. Belt, George Washington University