Twitter Adoption in U.S. Legislatures: A Fifty-State Study

Abstract

This study draws theoretical inspiration from the literature on Twitter adoption and Twitter activity in United States legislatures, applying predictions from those limited studies to all 7,378 politicians serving across 50 American state legislatures in the fall of 2015. Tests of bivariate association carried out for individual states lead to widely varying results, indicating an underlying diversity of legislative environments. However, a pooled multivariate analysis for all 50 states indicates that the number of constituents per legislator, district youth, district level of educational attainment, legislative professionalism, being a woman, sitting in the upper chamber, holding a leadership position, and legislative inexperience are all significantly and positively associated with Twitter adoption and Twitter activity. Controlling for these factors, legislator party, majority status, partisan instability, district income, and the percent of households in a state with an Internet connection are not significantly related to either Twitter adoption or recent Twitter use. A significant share of variation in social media adoption by legislators remains unexplained, leaving considerable room for further theoretical development and the development of contingent historical accounts.