Comparing Congressional Communication Across Platforms

• In Event: One Vision: Elite Communication Across Platforms

Abstract

It’s Not What You Say, It’s Where You Say It: Comparing Congressional Communication Across Platforms

While a great deal is known about why candidates adopt different rhetorical strategies, relatively little is known about how the communication platform influences the features of a candidate’s message. Campaign communication is a key component for effective promissory responsiveness (Mansbridge 2003). Just as Edelman (1964) observed that moving from the setting of an in-person stump speech to a televised address can fundamentally change the relationship between the candidate and the audience, so too might evolving modes to campaign discourse impact the role campaigns play in representative government.

Given the proliferation of internet communication platforms, it is important to examine how candidates use the varied communication tools at their disposal, and whether the platform is influencing the nature of the representative-constituent relationship. Candidates, we argue, make rhetorical decisions based on their appraisal of the risk environment and the communicative norms of the platform. These features vary a great deal across platforms, leading to different expectations about the types of messages these platforms will carry.

We test these expectations using two vast sources of data: (1) text collected from over 44,000 unique issue pages from candidates’ “.com” and “.gov” websites (2008 - 2018); and (2) over 700,000 tweets from candidates’ campaign and official government Twitter accounts (2017 - 2018). Using this data, we create a novel partisan-based issue dictionary and use both hand-coding and machine learning methods to classify texts according to emotive content and issue content. This paper then examines consistency in communication style across four platforms— campaign Twitter accounts, official government Twitter accounts, campaign websites, and official House member websites— and compares how these platforms deploy emotive communication and invoke issues.

Our results demonstrate that candidates alter their rhetorical style based on platform (Twitter versus website), and that candidates use government and campaign platforms in fundamentally different ways. While there is a degree of consistency in campaigns’ messaging approach, we find evidence of considerable platform differences with respect to both emotive content (i.e. negativity) as well as issues emphasized.

These findings not only suggest that candidates use platforms strategically to satisfy different campaign goals, but also that the process of political representation may be influenced by the platform of communication at a representative’s disposal. Our research also contributes to our understanding of position-taking and issue-ownership in competitive electoral environments.

Abstract References:

1. Edelman, Murray. 1964. The Symbolic Uses of Politics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

2. Mansbridge, Jane. (2003). Rethinking Representation. American Political Science Review 97(4): 515-528.

Authors

• Whitney Hua, University of Southern California

• Christopher Chapp, St. Olaf College