Pub Date : 2023-01-04DOI: 10.1177/1532673X221148677
Cody R. Melcher
The two dominant paradigms in the study of white Americans’ racial attitudes—symbolic racism and group position theory—while fundamentally differing with regard to theoretical orientations and causal emphases, concur in their rejection of individual-level economic circumstances—typically operationalized through either conventional measures of class or direct racial threats to whites’ personal lives—as a meaningful determinant of whites’ racial attitudes. This article argues that these existing measures do not sufficiently consider the subjective dimension of individuals’ economic well-being. As such, conclusions drawn from the relative lack of association between these measures and racial attitudes are likely overstated. Utilizing a measure of affective economic insecurity—anxiety concerning one’s economic circumstances—a strong correlative relationship is shown to exist between this dimension of individual-level economic circumstances and whites’ racial attitudes. Specifically, it is shown that affective economic insecurity is related to whites’ level of racial resentment, their perception of racialized labor market competition, and their attitudes toward immigration. A causal relationship between affective economic insecurity and perceptions of racialized labor market competition is established through an original survey experiment.
{"title":"“Economic Insecurity and the Racial Attitudes of White Americans”","authors":"Cody R. Melcher","doi":"10.1177/1532673X221148677","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X221148677","url":null,"abstract":"The two dominant paradigms in the study of white Americans’ racial attitudes—symbolic racism and group position theory—while fundamentally differing with regard to theoretical orientations and causal emphases, concur in their rejection of individual-level economic circumstances—typically operationalized through either conventional measures of class or direct racial threats to whites’ personal lives—as a meaningful determinant of whites’ racial attitudes. This article argues that these existing measures do not sufficiently consider the subjective dimension of individuals’ economic well-being. As such, conclusions drawn from the relative lack of association between these measures and racial attitudes are likely overstated. Utilizing a measure of affective economic insecurity—anxiety concerning one’s economic circumstances—a strong correlative relationship is shown to exist between this dimension of individual-level economic circumstances and whites’ racial attitudes. Specifically, it is shown that affective economic insecurity is related to whites’ level of racial resentment, their perception of racialized labor market competition, and their attitudes toward immigration. A causal relationship between affective economic insecurity and perceptions of racialized labor market competition is established through an original survey experiment.","PeriodicalId":51482,"journal":{"name":"American Politics Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2023-01-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47312449","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-27DOI: 10.1177/1532673X221148674
Philip Moniz
How does policy-relevant information change citizens’ policy attitudes? Though giving numerical information about social conditions has been found, at times, to change policy attitudes, why it works (or doesn’t) is poorly understood. I argue new or corrective information may not translate into policy-attitude change in part because it fails to instill a sense of need for change. Perceived problem seriousness, an affect-laden judgment about the acceptability of the status quo, may therefore be an important psychological mechanism through which information changes people’s minds. To perceive a problem, conditions must seem worse than they ought to be. Previous research, however, presents numerical information without a point of reference from which citizens can base their judgments. By contextualizing facts with reference points from the past (time) as well as other countries (space), four survey experiments show that numerical information about a range of social problems can change policy attitudes by first changing their perceived seriousness.
{"title":"Facts in Context: Problem Perceptions, Numerical Information, and Policy Attitudes","authors":"Philip Moniz","doi":"10.1177/1532673X221148674","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X221148674","url":null,"abstract":"How does policy-relevant information change citizens’ policy attitudes? Though giving numerical information about social conditions has been found, at times, to change policy attitudes, why it works (or doesn’t) is poorly understood. I argue new or corrective information may not translate into policy-attitude change in part because it fails to instill a sense of need for change. Perceived problem seriousness, an affect-laden judgment about the acceptability of the status quo, may therefore be an important psychological mechanism through which information changes people’s minds. To perceive a problem, conditions must seem worse than they ought to be. Previous research, however, presents numerical information without a point of reference from which citizens can base their judgments. By contextualizing facts with reference points from the past (time) as well as other countries (space), four survey experiments show that numerical information about a range of social problems can change policy attitudes by first changing their perceived seriousness.","PeriodicalId":51482,"journal":{"name":"American Politics Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45297947","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-05DOI: 10.1177/1532673X221144053
S. Stoddard
Political scientists have long recognized educational attainment as a strong predictor of voter turnout, but the mechanisms through which educational experiences lead voters to the polls remain underexplored. This research begins to open this proverbial black box to understand the specific types of scholastic experiences that encourage voting. Grounded in previous findings by scholars of policy feedback and political socialization, a mix of qualitative and quantitative data analyses reveal that nonacademic high school experiences can have powerful and lasting interpretive effects. Participants in performance and service-based extracurricular activities are consistently recognized for their efforts and connected to their communities, leading to interpretations of dignity, efficacy, and civic duty. As a result, these young Americans are more likely than their peers to vote in early adulthood. Further analyses uncover critical effects based on socioeconomic status: many interpretive educational experiences have more profound impacts on the voting behaviors of young citizens who may lack opportunities for positive political socialization in their home and social environments. Unfortunately, those young Americans whose participatory behaviors could be most impacted by uplifting extracurricular experiences are also least likely to have access to and participate in these programs, a gap that may have been exacerbated during the recent pandemic.
{"title":"The Civic Value of Education: How Scholastic Experiences Create Active Citizens","authors":"S. Stoddard","doi":"10.1177/1532673X221144053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X221144053","url":null,"abstract":"Political scientists have long recognized educational attainment as a strong predictor of voter turnout, but the mechanisms through which educational experiences lead voters to the polls remain underexplored. This research begins to open this proverbial black box to understand the specific types of scholastic experiences that encourage voting. Grounded in previous findings by scholars of policy feedback and political socialization, a mix of qualitative and quantitative data analyses reveal that nonacademic high school experiences can have powerful and lasting interpretive effects. Participants in performance and service-based extracurricular activities are consistently recognized for their efforts and connected to their communities, leading to interpretations of dignity, efficacy, and civic duty. As a result, these young Americans are more likely than their peers to vote in early adulthood. Further analyses uncover critical effects based on socioeconomic status: many interpretive educational experiences have more profound impacts on the voting behaviors of young citizens who may lack opportunities for positive political socialization in their home and social environments. Unfortunately, those young Americans whose participatory behaviors could be most impacted by uplifting extracurricular experiences are also least likely to have access to and participate in these programs, a gap that may have been exacerbated during the recent pandemic.","PeriodicalId":51482,"journal":{"name":"American Politics Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48538149","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-22DOI: 10.1177/1532673X221139762
M. Sagir, Stephen T. Mockabee
This paper examines public opinion about immigration policy in 2012 and 2016, seeking to understand whether there are meaningful differences in public opinion across these elections, whether the predictors of opinion changed, and whether the issue’s salience grew. One prominent candidate for explaining differences in opinion about immigration in 2016 is the rhetoric of Donald J. Trump, whose presidential candidacy was launched with an attack on immigration from Mexico. We analyze content from Trump’s campaign speeches and from Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign speeches to compare the emphasis on immigration themes, finding that Trump talked far more about immigration than Romney did. We also examine media coverage and find a marked increase in mentions of the immigration issue, which should, in theory, lead to more people seeing immigration as an important problem. We analyze “most important problem” questions from American National Election Studies surveys and find that mentions of immigration increased from less than one percent in 2012 to about five percent in 2016. However, we find that the overall distribution of public opinion about immigration changed very little from 2012 to 2016. Multivariate models show that the predictors of opinion about immigration policies were primarily the same in 2016 as in 2012: a combination of perceived economic threat, perceived cultural threat, and ethnic prejudice. In addition, models of presidential vote choice find that immigration issues were statistically significant predictors in 2016 but not in 2012. All of this suggests that Trump’s 2016 candidacy did not persuade so much as it activated. Trump’s rhetoric did not significantly alter American public opinion on immigration. Still, his emphasis on the immigration issue did garner increased media coverage and was attractive to many Republican and conservative voters who already held anti-immigration views.
{"title":"Public Attitudes Toward Immigration: Was There a Trump Effect?","authors":"M. Sagir, Stephen T. Mockabee","doi":"10.1177/1532673X221139762","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X221139762","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines public opinion about immigration policy in 2012 and 2016, seeking to understand whether there are meaningful differences in public opinion across these elections, whether the predictors of opinion changed, and whether the issue’s salience grew. One prominent candidate for explaining differences in opinion about immigration in 2016 is the rhetoric of Donald J. Trump, whose presidential candidacy was launched with an attack on immigration from Mexico. We analyze content from Trump’s campaign speeches and from Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign speeches to compare the emphasis on immigration themes, finding that Trump talked far more about immigration than Romney did. We also examine media coverage and find a marked increase in mentions of the immigration issue, which should, in theory, lead to more people seeing immigration as an important problem. We analyze “most important problem” questions from American National Election Studies surveys and find that mentions of immigration increased from less than one percent in 2012 to about five percent in 2016. However, we find that the overall distribution of public opinion about immigration changed very little from 2012 to 2016. Multivariate models show that the predictors of opinion about immigration policies were primarily the same in 2016 as in 2012: a combination of perceived economic threat, perceived cultural threat, and ethnic prejudice. In addition, models of presidential vote choice find that immigration issues were statistically significant predictors in 2016 but not in 2012. All of this suggests that Trump’s 2016 candidacy did not persuade so much as it activated. Trump’s rhetoric did not significantly alter American public opinion on immigration. Still, his emphasis on the immigration issue did garner increased media coverage and was attractive to many Republican and conservative voters who already held anti-immigration views.","PeriodicalId":51482,"journal":{"name":"American Politics Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44252688","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-21DOI: 10.1177/1532673X221139142
G. Markarian
This paper studies how spatial proximity to pre-election police killings affects voter turnout. I argue that incidents of police violence have neighborhood-level effects. Nearby voters are more likely to learn about proximal killings than those further away. If perceived as unjust, police killings teach political lessons that reduce voters’ trust in government and political efficacy. In turn, this impacts voter turnout. Observing the 2016 presidential election, I test this theory using geolocated voter data and a difference-in-differences design with matched groups. I find that pre-election police killings reduce voter turnout by 3 percentage points in the killings’ one-mile radius. Space and race matter. Police killings reduce Black voter turnout by 5.9 percentage points in the killings’ one-mile radius, but Black voters one to two miles away from the killings are unaffected. However, police killings do not affect White and Latino voter turnout regardless of the distance.
{"title":"The Impact of Police Killings on Proximal Voter Turnout","authors":"G. Markarian","doi":"10.1177/1532673X221139142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X221139142","url":null,"abstract":"This paper studies how spatial proximity to pre-election police killings affects voter turnout. I argue that incidents of police violence have neighborhood-level effects. Nearby voters are more likely to learn about proximal killings than those further away. If perceived as unjust, police killings teach political lessons that reduce voters’ trust in government and political efficacy. In turn, this impacts voter turnout. Observing the 2016 presidential election, I test this theory using geolocated voter data and a difference-in-differences design with matched groups. I find that pre-election police killings reduce voter turnout by 3 percentage points in the killings’ one-mile radius. Space and race matter. Police killings reduce Black voter turnout by 5.9 percentage points in the killings’ one-mile radius, but Black voters one to two miles away from the killings are unaffected. However, police killings do not affect White and Latino voter turnout regardless of the distance.","PeriodicalId":51482,"journal":{"name":"American Politics Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41343970","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-16DOI: 10.1177/1532673X221136842
Stephanie Chan, Tanika Raychaudhuri, Ali A. Valenzuela
How do perceptions of local immigrant populations influence immigration policy views? Building on findings that Americans may not accurately perceive population dynamics, we argue that objective measures do not fully capture the effects of local context on public opinion. Our research uses novel subjective experimental reminders about current levels of and recent changes in local immigrant populations to explore how these perceptions impact immigration policy views. In a survey experiment, we asked 2,400 Americans to consider current levels of or recent changes in their local immigrant population. Asking subjects to consider current levels of local immigrant populations modestly increases support for pro-immigrant policies, with particularly strong effects among non-White and Republicans. These effects may be driven by positive perceptions of immigrants and have implications for understanding the role of local community frames in shaping public opinion about immigration, particularly for groups who do not typically support permissive immigration policies.
{"title":"Perceived Local Population Dynamics and Immigration Policy Views","authors":"Stephanie Chan, Tanika Raychaudhuri, Ali A. Valenzuela","doi":"10.1177/1532673X221136842","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X221136842","url":null,"abstract":"How do perceptions of local immigrant populations influence immigration policy views? Building on findings that Americans may not accurately perceive population dynamics, we argue that objective measures do not fully capture the effects of local context on public opinion. Our research uses novel subjective experimental reminders about current levels of and recent changes in local immigrant populations to explore how these perceptions impact immigration policy views. In a survey experiment, we asked 2,400 Americans to consider current levels of or recent changes in their local immigrant population. Asking subjects to consider current levels of local immigrant populations modestly increases support for pro-immigrant policies, with particularly strong effects among non-White and Republicans. These effects may be driven by positive perceptions of immigrants and have implications for understanding the role of local community frames in shaping public opinion about immigration, particularly for groups who do not typically support permissive immigration policies.","PeriodicalId":51482,"journal":{"name":"American Politics Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45344401","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-14DOI: 10.1177/1532673X221139758
Yat To Yeung
Are American elected officials equally responsive to all Asian subgroups? Asian American is one of the major racial/ethnic groups in the United States and is currently the fastest-growing racial group. However, studies on the representation of Asian Americans are limited. Studies also commonly view Asian Americans as a single, homogenous group and omit the heterogeneity within this unique population. I argue that to understand any racial/ethnic group better, we should look into the ethnic subgroups and examine them as separate populations. I conducted an audit experiment in this study and sent emails to more than 2000 state legislators, manipulating senders' names to represent different Asian subgroups. I find that none of the subgroups received a lower response rate than white constituents, regardless of the officials' racial group and partisan affiliation. However, Korean constituents were less likely to receive a friendly response than white and Vietnamese constituents. The results also show that Latino and Black legislators were less friendly in their emails and less responsive than their Asian and white counterparts. This study sheds light on the heterogeneity of racial/ethnic groups, which scholars have routinely overlooked.
{"title":"Beyond Pan-Ethnicity: Responsiveness of Elected Officials to Asian American Subgroups","authors":"Yat To Yeung","doi":"10.1177/1532673X221139758","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X221139758","url":null,"abstract":"Are American elected officials equally responsive to all Asian subgroups? Asian American is one of the major racial/ethnic groups in the United States and is currently the fastest-growing racial group. However, studies on the representation of Asian Americans are limited. Studies also commonly view Asian Americans as a single, homogenous group and omit the heterogeneity within this unique population. I argue that to understand any racial/ethnic group better, we should look into the ethnic subgroups and examine them as separate populations. I conducted an audit experiment in this study and sent emails to more than 2000 state legislators, manipulating senders' names to represent different Asian subgroups. I find that none of the subgroups received a lower response rate than white constituents, regardless of the officials' racial group and partisan affiliation. However, Korean constituents were less likely to receive a friendly response than white and Vietnamese constituents. The results also show that Latino and Black legislators were less friendly in their emails and less responsive than their Asian and white counterparts. This study sheds light on the heterogeneity of racial/ethnic groups, which scholars have routinely overlooked.","PeriodicalId":51482,"journal":{"name":"American Politics Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45419037","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-14DOI: 10.1177/1532673X221139757
Joanne M. Miller, David A. M. Peterson, Kyle L. Saunders, S. McClurg
Given that political interest is one of the best predictors of political participation, it remains curious that the causes of interest are undertheorized and understudied. Notably absent from much of the research on political interest is an exploration of how variations in the nature of politics itself might have an impact on individual-level political interest. We develop a theory and a set of testable predictions about how partisanship interacts with the presence of a presidential (vs. midterm) election, the party of the sitting president, and elite polarization, to affect political interest. We report multilevel models that use ANES measures of political interest and partisanship and the DW-NOMINATE Senate polarization measure (from 1960 to 2008) and discuss the implications of our findings for the long-term prospects of an interested electorate.
{"title":"Putting the Political in Political Interest: The Conditional Effect of Politics on Citizens’ Interest in Politics","authors":"Joanne M. Miller, David A. M. Peterson, Kyle L. Saunders, S. McClurg","doi":"10.1177/1532673X221139757","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X221139757","url":null,"abstract":"Given that political interest is one of the best predictors of political participation, it remains curious that the causes of interest are undertheorized and understudied. Notably absent from much of the research on political interest is an exploration of how variations in the nature of politics itself might have an impact on individual-level political interest. We develop a theory and a set of testable predictions about how partisanship interacts with the presence of a presidential (vs. midterm) election, the party of the sitting president, and elite polarization, to affect political interest. We report multilevel models that use ANES measures of political interest and partisanship and the DW-NOMINATE Senate polarization measure (from 1960 to 2008) and discuss the implications of our findings for the long-term prospects of an interested electorate.","PeriodicalId":51482,"journal":{"name":"American Politics Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46829368","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-14DOI: 10.1177/1532673X221139475
John K. Wagner, Adi Wiezel
What can American partisan affect groups tell us about different models of partisan affect over a recent snapshot in time? Moreover, what implications do these groups have for political trust over that same snapshot in time? Results from the 2020 and 2016 American National Election Studies suggest that most partisans feel positively toward their inparty and negatively toward their outparty (Classically-Polarized)—consistent with classical approaches to affective polarization. However, some feel negatively toward their inparty and outparty (Double-Dislikers)—more consistent with negative partisanship models. Finally, some feel positively toward their inparty and outparty (Double-Likers). Despite recent work suggesting increasing outparty and inparty animosity, which implies growth in Double-Dislikers and the Classically-Polarized, only the Classically-Polarized grew between 2016 and 2020. Regarding political trust, compared to the Classically-Polarized, Double-Dislikers are associated with less political trust, whereas Double-Likers are associated with increasingly more political trust, suggesting substantive reasons for focusing on each group.
{"title":"Do Partisans Always Like Their Inparty and Dislike Their Outparty? An Analysis of Partisans Across the Affective Spectrum","authors":"John K. Wagner, Adi Wiezel","doi":"10.1177/1532673X221139475","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X221139475","url":null,"abstract":"What can American partisan affect groups tell us about different models of partisan affect over a recent snapshot in time? Moreover, what implications do these groups have for political trust over that same snapshot in time? Results from the 2020 and 2016 American National Election Studies suggest that most partisans feel positively toward their inparty and negatively toward their outparty (Classically-Polarized)—consistent with classical approaches to affective polarization. However, some feel negatively toward their inparty and outparty (Double-Dislikers)—more consistent with negative partisanship models. Finally, some feel positively toward their inparty and outparty (Double-Likers). Despite recent work suggesting increasing outparty and inparty animosity, which implies growth in Double-Dislikers and the Classically-Polarized, only the Classically-Polarized grew between 2016 and 2020. Regarding political trust, compared to the Classically-Polarized, Double-Dislikers are associated with less political trust, whereas Double-Likers are associated with increasingly more political trust, suggesting substantive reasons for focusing on each group.","PeriodicalId":51482,"journal":{"name":"American Politics Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48458824","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-01DOI: 10.1177/1532673X221113017
S. Smith, A. Russell
For the past decade, members of both the House and Senate have increasingly used Twitter to curate a political agenda, but some are better equipped to drive digital policy conversations—even on a public platform with few constraints, low costs, and outsized user discretion. This research note explores the variable digital representation between congressional chambers, using tweets from the 115th Congress to illustrate asymmetric patterns in lawmakers’ rhetorical agendas on Twitter and the role of policy for self-presentation. Senators tweet more frequently, more often about policy, and represent a more diverse agenda on the platform. In this note, we suggest senators’ additional resources and incentives for policy expertise shape important differences in digital engagement, illustrating the prevailing importance of institutional nuance for understanding how lawmakers use Twitter to frame their political reputations.
{"title":"Different Chambers, Divergent Rhetoric: Institutional Differences and Policy Representation on Social Media","authors":"S. Smith, A. Russell","doi":"10.1177/1532673X221113017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X221113017","url":null,"abstract":"For the past decade, members of both the House and Senate have increasingly used Twitter to curate a political agenda, but some are better equipped to drive digital policy conversations—even on a public platform with few constraints, low costs, and outsized user discretion. This research note explores the variable digital representation between congressional chambers, using tweets from the 115th Congress to illustrate asymmetric patterns in lawmakers’ rhetorical agendas on Twitter and the role of policy for self-presentation. Senators tweet more frequently, more often about policy, and represent a more diverse agenda on the platform. In this note, we suggest senators’ additional resources and incentives for policy expertise shape important differences in digital engagement, illustrating the prevailing importance of institutional nuance for understanding how lawmakers use Twitter to frame their political reputations.","PeriodicalId":51482,"journal":{"name":"American Politics Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46908813","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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