Running

Head: CONGRESSIONAL SOCIAL MEDIA MESSAGING

CONGRESS CONNECTED: A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF CONGRESSIONAL USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Harrison B. Bryant Dr. Compton Political Science Senior Thesis Chapman University 11 15 - 2012

Author Note Correspondence concerning this paper should be addressed to Harrison B. Bryant, 6 Leonado, Rancho Santa Margarita, CA 92688. Email: bryan123@mail.chapman.edu.

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Abstract

Social media is no longer solely the pastime of college students and tech enthusiasts. The platform has matured and evolved into a communications tool that is used by over 65% of the American population, and politicians are no exception. This article specifically investigates the qualitative content differences between a congressional candidates traditional methods of communications and their communication via social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. We utilize a dataset that incorporates over 5,000 data points drawn from individual tweets and posts placed on social networking sites by ten candidates and their campaigns, as well as qualitative analysis of websites and television advertisements. Our findings suggest that though congressional candidates, both incumbents and challengers, are using social media in ways unique to that platform, the overall strategic message is the same. The communication facilitated by social media provides voters with some distinct content, but much of it is the same communication on a different medium, with the only difference being that there is more of it.

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This new technology created a new online political environment. Politicians were able to connect to citizens on a different level [] candidates had a whole new playing field for a political match of epic proportions. - Hendricks & Denton, Communicator-in-Chief

1. Introduction
In the 2010 film, The Social Network, the character portrayed by actor Justin Timberlake, when informed about the up-and-coming social network TheFacebook, exclaims: You dont even know what the thing is yet. How big it can get, how far it can go (Fincher). It is often difficult to remember that social media and social networking, although ubiquitous today, were in their infant stages fewer than ten years ago. Facebook, the social networking platform whose founding spawned the dramatized narrative quoted above, first came online in 2004; the site now has 1.01 billion registered users and is accessed by people in developed and developing countries alike (www.facebok.com/). Although it may seem like Facebook is the Cinderella-story of the social media world, it is not alone in its rise to popularity: sites like Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn have all experienced meteoric growth in the past few years. In fact, according to recent data from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, social networking sites are used by nearly 70% of American citizens; this statistic, significant enough in its own right, is even more impressive when one considers that only 78% of the United States has internet access (Brenner, 2012) This means that the vast majority of American citizens with access to the Internet are also members of an online social networking website, with few holdouts remaining. As social medias importance gradually spread, companies and other institutions began to take notice of the platforms potential. One such institution, in particular, has wholeheartedly embraced social media as a communicative tool and has thus become the focus of this paper; that institution is the United States Congress. Social medias penetration and adoption rates within

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Congress, and particularly within the Senate, have outpaced the rest of the nation and have reached 100%. Every sitting senator has, in one profile or another, an online presence nestled within social media (http://govsm.com/w/Senate). Most of this social media activity is centralized around the two most popular social networks, Twitter and Facebook, with all but one senator having a profile or account on at least one of the two.1 Some Senators have more than two social media accounts, reaching out to users on Facebook and Twitter as well as LinkedIn, YouTube, Google +, etc. With this rapid adoption of social media, an entirely new field of data sprang to the foreground. We believe that the content that politicians post on their social media profiles represents a goldmine of potential for researchers looking into the ideological strategies and methods of political communication. We look here specifically at the claim that social media platforms foster the development of unique political content that politicians do not share through their other outlets of communication. In other words, the communicative tool helps define the content. As Winograd and Hais state in their seminal work, The Millennial Makeover: Technology serves to enable [] changes by creating powerful ways to reach new voters with messages that directly relate to their concerns. [] The political world is about to be shaken to its core by the arrival of these new capabilities (2008). This paper attempts to discover differences, if they exist, between politicians representations of themselves across social media platforms as compared to their representations on more traditional outlets of communication in order to 1) determine whether any differences are present and 2) if such differences can be found, to look at what significance they hold. We look at ten individual congressional candidates competing for office in five distinct and competitive races and compare their social media 1 Senator James Risch, junior Representative from Idaho, is the only sitting senator who has neither a Facebook profile nor a Twitter account. He is, however, active on the video networking site, YouTube, having uploaded a total of 59 videos and accumulated over 16,000 views as of the date of this writing.

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content to the content of their websites, publications, and television ads. Our primary hypothesis is that, because of the nature of the platforms, political content posted by politicians on their social media profiles differs both in qualitative substance and quantity and lends to a more complete and informative view of each candidate. Additionally, we hypothesize that the content posted on social media profiles, though unique in substance from the content released via other outlets, will still conform to the overall campaign strategies predicted by Druckman, Kifer, and Parkin in their essay Campaign Communications in U.S. Congressional Elections. That is to say, politicians may post content on social media that does not appear anywhere else but that content will still reflect the overall rhetorical and strategic themes of the campaign.

2. Relevant Literature
The relative newness of social media, especially in the government sphere, has led to somewhat of a dearth in empirical studies looking at the platform. Though there has been some recent research with regard to congressional adoption rates of the medium itself, this has only served to demonstrate the popularity of the platform and has not revealed any substantive insight as to the significance of social media usage by Congress (Peterson, 2012). Much of the qualitative research on congressional social media usage has been focused on the relative relationships between congressional incumbents and specific demographics such as citizens, special interest groups, businesses, and the press (Hellweg, 2011; Oleszek, 2007). Typically, the primary question looked at by political and social scientists regarding social media and Congress has been to analyze the platforms ability to influence voting behavior and alter the relationship between American voters and their elected representatives (McGrath, 2011). However, numerous papers have been written to caution researchers about overemphasizing the predictive ability of

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Twitter when used to look at potential political participation outcomes (Gayo-Avello, 2011; 2012). Qualitative data analysis eschewing the numerical adoption rates or political power of social media instead of looking into the embedded content of politicians posts has been notably absent, with a select few exceptions. There has been research conducted on the content and strategies of congressional communication before, specifically with regard to the internet, but these studies did not take social media usage into account because they were either conducted before the platform had fully evolved or before it was in use by members of the Congress (Lipinski & Neddenriep, 2004; Johnson 2004; Owen, Davis, & Strickler, 1999). Moreover, as Honeycutt and Herring imply in their 2009 study, the content of social media posts has been largely overlooked, perhaps because of the significant amount of effort, time, and resources that are associated with gaining access to the data (Goldbeck et al., 2010). The Goldbeck et al. study represents what is probably the most comprehensive look at the content of congressional communication across social media, and yet it still limits its data to safe incumbents use of Twitter. A 2010 study carried out by the Congressional Management Foundation illustrates the need for a social media study that incorporates but also looks beyond Twitter. When asked about the importance of various social media platforms, Congressional actors such as aides, representatives, and senior managers in charge of social media content indicated that Facebook was the most important -with 64% identifying it as such - while Twitter came in second - with 42% identifying it as such.2 Finally, most, if not all, of the studies previously mentioned look at 2 These results come from a 2010 study carried out by the Congressional Management Foundation and published in a report entitles: #SocialCongress: Perceptions and Use of Social Media on Capitol Hill. The entire report can be found here: http://www.congressfoundation.org/projects/communicating-with-congress/social-congress

SOCIAL MEDIA MESSAGING the use of social media by members of Congress who have already been elected. This is

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substantially different from our study, which looks at this in combination with and comparison to the use of social media by congressional candidates campaigning for public office in order to contrast usage by the two. As Rikers pointed out in 1996, political scientists have very little knowledge about the rhetorical content of campaigns, which is, however, their principal feature [] the fact remains that we know very little about what to say in campaigns but this is what both political scientists and candidates want to know. In looking at the content of Congressional social media posts during a political campaign, any study which ignores the social media presence of an incumbents primary competitor seems to be inherently flawed in that it ignores a likely source of data which incumbents may be reacting to. The inclusion and comparison of candidates both in office and running for office provides a more complete picture and frames the context of the content.

3. Theoretical Aspects
The theoretical underpinnings of our study are grounded in two overlapping theories of political communication: media systems dependency theory and the underlying theories of congressional communication strategies. The former, media system dependency theory, argues that media systems gain popularity in accordance with how well they are able to meet the needs of the consumer (Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur, 1976). This speaks to the popularity of social media networks and implies, because of their 100% adoption rate in the Senate, that their effectiveness has been recognized by both members of Congress and their constituents. The effectiveness of this form of communication indicates that consumers, here referring to American citizens, have found information on social media that they believe to be worthwhile and substantive. The

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question which remains is simply whether or not this information is any different from what was already available. The second foundation of our study comes from previous research and established theories about the strategies and content of traditional congressional communication. We adopt the definition of traditional congressional media espoused by Goldbeck, Grimes, and Rogers, which states: Historically, congressional communication methods include: personal appearances, radio, television, newspaper, postal mail, e-mail, and Web sites (2010, italics added). The inclusion of websites here is critical, and we believe that it correctly categorizes them as a traditional form of communication that is distinct from social media. Though this field of research is broad and encompasses much more than what we look at here, the primary hypotheses that our study focuses on are as follows: 1: compared to challengers, incumbents will put significantly more emphasis on experience in public office, familiarity, and providing district or state benefits (Druckman et al., 2009). 2: The overall purpose of campaign and Congressional communication is to develop distinctions that help solidify and differentiate the ideological positions of the candidate or member of Congress (Riker, 1996; Berelson, Lazarsfeld, and McPhee, 1954). And 3: when compared to incumbents, challengers will employ significantly more negative rhetoric and provide more opportunities for voters to engage with the campaign (Druckman et al., 2009). These theories come from years of congressional studies and help to inform our own research. They provide us with reference points and comparison for the analysis of social media, but because of the unique properties of the platform, their predictions and frameworks must be used with caution.

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4. Data Used
With respect to our data, we have the benefit of historical records on our side. The studies that preceded this one were often inhibited by a lack of data. This was not because there had been a lack of studying social media, but rather, because before them there was relatively no social media to study. With the adoption rate in the Senate now at 100%, our research was able to look at the social media presence of various Congressional candidates without having to draw stretched comparisons between those using social media and those not using social media. Another implication of the total adoption rate in the Senate is that our data, though limited to five incumbents and five challengers, can likely be applied to the entire political body. In other words, the findings that our hypotheses uncover are not necessarily limited to the races from which they draw their conclusions.

Sample For our study, we randomly selected five competitive Senate races and looked at the social media presence of both the incumbent and their top challenger.3 We felt it important to look at the social media profiles of participants in a competitive race because, in a competitive race, both sides presumably have more incentive to work diligently to differentiate their positions and spread their message. We drew our dataset from the Facebook and Twitter accounts of the following ten candidates running for the U.S. Senate in 2012: Sen. Jon Tester and Denny Rehberg, Tim Kaine and George Allen, Richard Mourdock and Joe Donnelly, Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Scott Brown, Chris Murphy and Linda McMahon. Using the profiles of these 3 The races were labeled as competitive by both CNN (http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/results/race/senate) and Real Clear Politics (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/election_2012/battle_for_congress.html)

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candidates we compiled a database of 1,412 tweets and 8,273 Facebook posts for a combined sample of 9,685 social media messages. In addition, we compiled a total of 954 YouTube videos and focused specifically on the top five uploads in the category of television commercials that had been aired by each candidates campaign. Finally, every candidates website was put through a rigorous textual analysis which extracted any and all text and processed it using keyword frequency software. The number of data points per candidate varies, of course, by their relative activity online; some candidates had fewer than 300 unique posts whereas others had over 4,000. These figures have significant implications of their own for future research looking at the effectiveness of social media saturation. All data was gathered and archived online during a twoweek period from October 26th, 2012, to November 9th, 2012. It should be noted that because our study is concerned with the content and messaging of congressional social media usage, we do not look at replies and feedback from the followers of those profiles; we do, however, look at the replies of the candidates to those followers, as we believe this still represents a transmission of their strategic prerogatives and a communication of their message.

5. Methodological Process
Because of the enormous amount of data being drawn on and the difficulty of representing a qualitative analysis of over 10,000 unique data points, we attempt to bring both quantitative and qualitative data analysis into our study. The quantitative portions are included in the interest of furthering the field of research and allowing for a repetition of the experiment by future studies. The data provide a numerical indication of qualitative factors, and they allow us to draw our key conclusions. Quantitative Analysis: Keyword Frequency

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We ran a simple textual analysis of each individual candidates total social media posts, specifically archiving the keyword frequency of the most often repeated words and phrases; in doing this, we accumulated an exhaustive list of the most frequently used terms for each candidates Twitter and Facebook. The keyword frequency test is used as one overall representation of the content posted on the candidates social media networks. Words that appeared often are indicative of repeating themes stressed by the candidates. We repeated this analysis for each candidates five most recent campaign videos (as posted on YouTube), five most popular videos, and their campaign websites and then compared the frequency of the mostused terms in order to draw our conclusions. Keywords are here defined as words or phrases that carry a specific contextual message in and of themselves; non-political articles and website navigational terms were excluded from our study. In addition, the threshold for significance was set at above 5%, meaning that repeated words that fell below 5% of the total text on social media profiles or websites were initially excluded (if no individual word exceeded 5% distribution then we began with highest percentage possible). Interestingly, this led to a top five word count for both websites and social media profiles (i.e. the top five most frequently used terms were the only such words to exceed 5% of the total copy writing for each candidate). We also look specifically at the number of times a candidate mentions his or her opponent, listing this separate from keyword frequency.

Qualitative Analysis The qualitative aspects of our study are based off of the guidelines of Earl Babbie. Babbies text, The Practice of Social Research, provides an excellent introduction to qualitative data analysis:

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The activity were about to examine is as much art as science. At the very least, there are no cut-and-dried steps that guarantee success. Its a lot like learning how to paint with watercolors or compose a symphony. You can certainly gain education in such categories; you can even take university courses in both. Each has its own conventions and techniques as well as tips you may find useful as you set out to create art or music. However, instruction can only take you so far. The final product must come from you. Much the same can be said of qualitative data processing. (2010) With this in mind, we do not presume that our qualitative results will be easily replicated or even entirely agreed upon by everyone who reads them. In order to determine the various differences between social media posts and the candidates other content, we read through and coded a representative sample of 10,248 social media posts and 1000 pieces of content characteristic of more traditional messaging, which included a candidates website, newsletters, and spoken content in televisions ads. Items were coded as similar if they directly quoted something posted on the candidates website, spoken in their advertisements, or written in their newsletters. Items that were not direct quotes but were otherwise the same in terms of content were coded as similar as well. Items were coded as unique if they were unique to the candidates social media presence and could not be found on their traditional outlets of communication (social media updates on websites were excluded). The results below are divided by each race and show data for each individual contender as well as a comparison between the two challengers for the same seat. One key consideration that should be noted with regard to these results is that they do not take into account the content of the links that are spread by the candidates on their social media accounts. The time commitment and coding difficulty for this type of analysis rendered the task impossible for this focused study and, therefore, the analysis of the social media content is reflective only of content that could specifically be found on their immediate profiles. A more indepth study would find a rich source of analysis by looking into linked content.

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6. Results4
Montana: Jon Tester (D, Incumbent) vs. Denny Rehberg (R) Twitter Keyword Density Tester: (as percentage of total) KLOUT = 65 Rehberg: (as percentage of total) KLOUT = 10 Mention Opponent Tester: 14% 27 Rehberg: 41% 29 Table 1.1 1 2 3 4 5 MTSEN Jon Tester Montana vote 62% 54% 44% 24% 124 107 87 48 MTSEN MTPOL Denny Montana Rehberg 90% 77% 35% 20% 64 55 25 14 Total Tweets 199 71 4 Senator

14% 27 15% 11

Facebook Keyword Density 1 2 3 Tester: Jon Tester Montana (as percentage of total) 89% 60% 36% 133 90 54 Rehberg: Denny Montana Vote (as percentage of total) 63% 35% 31% 47 26 23 Mention Opponent Total Posts Tester: 150 9% 13 Rehberg: 75 37% 28 Table 1.2

5 Obama 29% 29% 22 22

4 All percentages are rounded to the nearest whole number. All traditional keyword totals were limited to 1,000 items. The traditional keyword density figures were drawn from the candidates website and newest television campaign advertisements on November 2nd, 2012. Klout Scores, which are provided by the social influence measuring utility, Klout, are included for reference and in order to help frame the Twitter and Facebook data shown here.

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Traditional Keyword Density 1 2 3 4 Tester: Tester Billings Montana Jon 2% 2% 2% 20 20 19 Rehberg: Rehberg Denny Senate Follow 3% 2% 2% 30 20 20 Mention Opponent Total Words Tester: 0% 1000 0 Rehberg: 0% 1000 0 Table 1.3 Virginia: Tim Kaine (D) vs. George Allen (R) Twitter Keyword Density Kaine: (as percentage of total) KLOUT = 70 Allen: KLOUT = 64 Mention Opponent Kaine: 0% 0 Allen: 0% 0 Table 2.1 1 Vasen 16% 31 VA 2 Vote 3 Sen

5 view 2% 16 2% 15 Campaign 1% 1% 10 10

4 Listen

5 Election 9% 17 10% 10

13% 11% 10% 25 21 19 SusanBVallen Forward Victory Support 17% 16% 10% 10% 17 16 10 10

Total Tweets 192 101 1 2 3 4 5 Virginia Senator Day Anne Election 27% 21% 15% 15% 13% 58 46 33 32 27 Allen George Support Virginia Obama 36% 26% 24% 24% 11%

Facebook Keyword Density Kaine: (as percentage of total) Allen: (as percentage of total)

SOCIAL MEDIA MESSAGING Mention Opponent Kaine: 0% 0 Allen: 19% 51 Table 2.2 98 Total Posts 215 274 71 67

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Traditional Keyword Density 1 Kaine: Kaine Allen: City Mention Opponent Total Words Kaine: 0% 1000 0 Allen: 0% 1000 2 Table 2.3

2% 20 4% 42

2 3 4 Virginia Read Tim 2% 2% 20 19 Allen George Read 2% 2% 21 19

2% 16 1% 9

5 Security 2% 15 November 1% 8

Indiana: Richard Mourdock (R) vs. Joe Donnelly(D) Twitter Keyword Density 1 2 3 4 5 Mourdock: INSEN Hoosiers Mourdock Senate 51stVote (as percentage of total) 97% 19% 17% 13% KLOUT = 66 187 36 32 25 Donnelly: INSEN Morning Volunteers Proud South (as percentage of total) 17% 7% 4% 4% KLOUT = 57 26 10 6 6 Mention Opponent Total Tweets Mourdock: 192 21% 41 Donnelly: 150

11% 21 3% 5

SOCIAL MEDIA MESSAGING 0% 0 Table 3.1

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Facebook Keyword Density 1 2 3 4 5 Mourdock: Mourdock Senate Richard Government Indiana (as percentage of total) 50% 30% 27% 16% 14% 50 30 27 16 14 Donnelly: Joe Deus Father Donnelly Indiana (as percentage of total) 44% 38% 29% 23% 19% 225 194 150 120 95 Mention Opponent Total Posts Mourdock: 100 46% 46 Donnelly: 513 26% 135 Table 3.2

Traditional Keyword Density 1 2 3 4 5 Mourdock: Richard Federal Believes Constitution Mourdock 2% 1% 1% 1% 1% 22 11 8 7 6 Donnelly: Joe donnelly indiana donate senator 2% 1% 1% 1% 1% 21 8 8 5 5 Mention Opponent Total Words Mourdock: 0% 1000 1 Donnelly: 0% 1000 1 Table 3.3 Massachusetts: Elizabeth Warren (D) vs. Sen. Scott Brown (R, Incumbent) Twitter Keyword Density Warren: 1 MASEN 2 3 teamwarren Ma 4 Vote 5 Thanks

SOCIAL MEDIA MESSAGING (as percentage of total) KLOUT = 83 Brown: (as percentage of total) KLOUT = 81 Mention Opponent Warren: 47% 50 Brown: 14% 12 Table 4.1 85% 18% 14% 89 19 15 MASEN pploverparty Vote bus 53% 19% 13% 44 16 11 Total Tweets 105 83

Bryant 17 13% 14 morning 10% 8 10% 8 10% 11

Facebook Keyword Density 1 2 3 4 Warren: Congratulations Warren Elizabeth Vote (as percentage of total) 24% 24% 20% 1506 1489 1286 Brown: Rally People Party Please (as percentage of total) 26% 24% 24% 13 12 12 Mention Opponent Total Posts Warren: 6,298 15% 932 Brown: 50 6% 3 Table 4.2

5 People 13% 816 Vote 24% 12 22% 11 8% 521

Traditional Keyword Density 1 2 3 4 5 Warren: Elizabeth Warren November Issues Jobs 2% 1% 1% 0% 0% 16 12 8 4 4 Brown: Scott Brown Senate Campaign Website 1% 1% 1% 0% 0% 5 5 5 4 3 Mention Opponent Total Words Warren 0% 1000 1

SOCIAL MEDIA MESSAGING Brown 0% 0 Table 4.3 Connecticut: Chris Murphy (D) vs. Linda McMahon (R) Twitter Keyword Density Murphy: (as percentage of total) KLOUT = 80 McMahon: (as percentage of total) KLOUT = 79 Mention Opponent Murphy: 8% 11 McMahon: 5% 9 Table 5.1 1 CTSen 35% 47 CTSen 47% 87 Total Tweets 135 184 Sandy 25% 46 2 Chris 12% 16 1000

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3 4 5 Debate Proud CT 10% 8% 8% 13 11 11 Thanks GoTV LindaMcMahon 22% 14% 4% 41 25 8

Facebook Keyword Density 1 2 3 4 Murphy: Father Chris Murphy World (as percentage of total) 35% 30% 29% 148 125 121 McMahon: Linda Staff Jobs People (as percentage of total) 31% 26% 18% 55 45 32 Mention Opponent Total Posts Murphy: 423 28% 117 McMahon 175 16% 28 Table 5.2

19% 80 10% 18

5 Universe 16% 68 Plan 10% 18

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Traditional Keyword Density 1 2 3 4 5 Murphy: Chris Murphy November Senate Campaign 3% 2% 1% 1% 0% 30 18 6 5 3 McMahon: Connecticut Linda Jobs Campaign McMahon 2% 2% 1% 1% 1% 19 17 11 9 8 Mention Opponent Total Words Murphy: 0% 1000 1 Brown: 0% 1000 2 Table 5.3
Social Similarity Similar Posts Total Posts SCORE

Tester/Rehberg Kaine/ Allen Mourdock/Donnelly Warren/Brown5 Murphy/McMahon Table 6.1

486 756 423 430 578

765 1075 955 650 917

64% 70% 44% 66% 63%

Total Social Similarity Score

3671 36%

Similar
6577 64%

Unique

Figure 6.2 5 Because this dataset was incredibly large, this specific dataset was limited to a representative sample of 10% of the original for coding.

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7. Discussion
These results reveal several key findings. First, when comparing the traditional sources of congressional communication to social media, a definitive numerical pattern emerges. Social media, with regard to keyword frequency, often differs greatly in the amount of keywords repeated compared to more traditional sources. In each case, the number one most repeated term on both Facebook and Twitter always appeared more often than its ranking equivalent on traditional sources. This correlates with a greater amount of content being posted on social media and shows that social media acts as an archive for political content in ways that websites, which are revised often, do not.. Tables 1.2 (Tester/Rehberg Facebook) and 1.3 (Tester/Rehberg Traditional), for example, show that for Denny Rehberg and Jon Tester, the most repeated term on both their Facebook and traditional sources was their name; however, this term was repeated 180 times on Facebook and only 50 times in traditional sources. This suggests that the social media platform allows politicians to post more content than they typically would have been able to disseminate. It also leads us to our second key finding, which is that, though the content differs in quantity, it is largely the same in substance. The focus that this keyword analysis provides allows a quantitative factor to reveal a qualitative conclusion. After comparing two-weeks worth of social media posts to traditional sources, all but the Mourdock and Donnelly profiles received a similarity score far above 50% (Table 6.1, Figure 6.2). We found that this was primarily because much of what was posted on social media simply linked back to other traditional outlets of congressional communication, with over 60% of all social media posts containing links back to the candidates websites. The similarity scores were significant because they further corroborate the notion that social media is parroting the politicians messages and not providing entirely new content.

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In addition, the claim that challengers will go negative which was advocated by Druckman, Kifer, and Parkin is confirmed via these results. The two challengers in our study Elizabeth Warren and Denny Rehberg both mention their opponent more often on social media than their opponent mentions them and, in fact, the only thing they mention more than their opponent is themselves (see tables 1.1, 1.2, 4.1, and 4.2). Again, this suggests that traditional campaign communication theories are applicable to social media messaging. Across all results, candidates names are consistently found in the top five most repeated terms, both on social media and in traditional sources. This again establishes that social media, though its content differs in numerical abundance, retains the qualitative substance of older forms of communication: candidates are using the platform to advertise themselves and get their name out to voters. Calls to action were also prevalent, with phrases which included the words vote, follow, and support appearing often across social media platforms. Although 36% of the posts from Facebook and Twitter were unique, the vast majority of the content posted on these congressional social media outlets was a mirroring of the content that was already available via the candidates websites, newsletters, or YouTube accounts. This minority portion of unique content was comprised primarily of descriptions of the candidates daily tasks and other updates that are typical of the social platforms. These findings align with our two hypotheses and reconfirm the findings of Druckman, Kifer, and Parkin. The potential that social media holds for American politics remains to be seen; judging by the results of our study, however, the current state of congressional social media usage seems to be disappointing. Though early optimists like and Winograd and Hais touted the introduction and adoption of social media as the coming of a new age of politics, it would appear this this new age is loaded with the same content. The hope that the dynamic and

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interactive environment that social media provides would lead to a more substantive relationship with the politicians who use it has yet to become a reality.

SOCIAL MEDIA MESSAGING References

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About Facebook. (n.d.). Facebook. Retrieved December 14, 2012, from https://www.facebook.com/facebook Babbie, E. R. (2010). The Basics of Social Research (5th Edition ed.). Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing. Ball-Rokeach, S. J., & DeFleur, M.L. (1976). A dependency model of mass media effects. Communication Research, 3, 3-21. Berelson, Bernhard R., Paul F. Lazarsfeld, and William N. McPhee. 1954. Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Brenner, J. (n.d.). Pew Internet: Social Networking (full detail) | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. Retrieved December 14, 2012, from http://pewinternet.org/Commentary/2012/March/Pew-Internet-Social-Networking-fulldetail.aspx CNN. (n.d.). Senate Race - 2012 Election Center - Elections & Politics from CNN.com. CNN.com. Retrieved December 14, 2012, from http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/results/ Congressional Management Foundation. (n.d.). #SocialCongress. Congressional Management Foundation. Retrieved December 14, 2012, from http://www.congressfoundation.org/projects/communicating-with-congress/socialcongress

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Druckman, James N., Martin J. Kifer and Michael Parkin. 2009. Campaign Communications in U.S. Congressional Elections. American Political Science Review 103(3):343366. Fincher, D. (Director). (2011). The Social Network [Motion picture]. U.S.A.: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Gayo-Avello, D.: Dont turn social media into another Literary Digest poll. Communications of the ACM, 54(10) pp. 121128 (2011) Gayo-Avello, D.: I Wanted to Predict Elections with Twitter and all I got was this Lousy Paper. Arxiv preprint arXiv:1204.6441. (2012) http://arxiv.org/abs/ Golbeck, J., Grimes, J. M., and Rogers, A. 2010. Twitter Use by the U.S. Congress. Journal of American Society for Information Science. 61, 8, 1612-1621. Government and Social Media Wiki - Senate. (n.d.). GovSM. Retrieved December 14, 2012, from http://govsm.com/w/Senate Hellweg, A. (2011). Social media sites of politicians influence their perception by constituents. The Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research of Communications, 2(1), 22-36. Honey, C., & Herring, S.C. (2009). Beyond microblogging: Conversation and collaboration via Twitter. In Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS 09) (pp. 110).Washington, DC: IEEE Press. Johnson, D. (2004). Congress online. NewYork: Routledge. Lipinski, D., & Neddenriep, G. (2004). Using new media to get old media coverage: How members of Congress utilize their Web sites to court journalists. Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 9(1), 721. McGrath, M. (2011). Technology, media, and political participation. National Civic Review, 100(3), 41-44.

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Oleszek, W.J. (2007). Congress and the Internet: Highlights. Washington, DC: Congressional Research Services. Owen, D., Davis, R., & Strickler, V.J. (1999). Congress and the Internet. Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 4(2), 1029. RealClearPolitics - Election 2012: Senate, House & Governor Races. (n.d.).RealClearPolitics Opinion, News, Analysis, Videos and Polls. Retrieved December 14, 2012, from http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/elec Riker, William H. 1996. The Strategy of Rhetoric, ed. Randell L. Calvert, John Mueller, and Rick Wilson. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Rolfe Daus, P. (n.d). To tweet or not to tweet: Exploring the determinants of early adoption of Twitter by House members in the 111th Congress. The Social Science Journal, 49(Special Issue: National and state politics: A current assessment), 430-438. doi:10.1016/j.soscij.2012.07.002 Winograd, M., & Hais, M. D. (2008). Millenial Makeover MySpace, YouTube, & the Future of American Politics.. Piscataway: Rutgers University Press.