Do Elected Officials Listen to Constituents on Social Media? Survey Evidence From Local Politicians in the United States

Chen, Kaiping; Lee, Nathan; Marble, William

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3251651

Cited by 4 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…For example, about 24% of Americans report having written a letter to a public representative (Schlozman, Verba, and Brady 2012). Surveys indicate that politicians pay some attention to social media messages from constituents as well, although these messages are not weighed as heavily as other constituent communications (Chen, Lee, and Marble 2018). Another way that politicians learn about citizens’ priorities is by tracking public opinion.…”

Section: The Mechanisms Of Issue Responsivenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who Leads? Who Follows? Measuring Issue Attention and Agenda Setting by Legislators and the Mass Public Using Social Media Data

et al. 2019

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Are legislators responsive to the priorities of the public? Research demonstrates a strong correspondence between the issues about which the public cares and the issues addressed by politicians, but conclusive evidence about who leads whom in setting the political agenda has yet to be uncovered. We answer this question with fine-grained temporal analyses of Twitter messages by legislators and the public during the 113th US Congress. After employing an unsupervised method that classifies tweets sent by legislators and citizens into topics, we use vector autoregression models to explore whose priorities more strongly predict the relationship between citizens and politicians. We find that legislators are more likely to follow, than to lead, discussion of public issues, results that hold even after controlling for the agenda-setting effects of the media. We also find, however, that legislators are more likely to be responsive to their supporters than to the general public.

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Section: The Mechanisms Of Issue Responsivenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who Leads? Who Follows? Measuring Issue Attention and Agenda Setting by Legislators and the Mass Public Using Social Media Data

et al. 2019

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“…Future research should explore perceptions about the efficacy of contacting online compared to offline. The perceived effectiveness of this modality may differ when citizens are surveyed versus when officials are surveyed ( Chen et al, 2018 ). Again, I draw on international scholarship that suggests gender differences (but not age differences) in the perceived efficacy of online forms of participation ( Demertzis et al, 2013 ; Lee & Huang, 2014 ; Martin et al, 2018 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Within this body of research is an ongoing debate about whether online modes are as impactful on the direction of government compared to offline modes. Buchi and Vogler (2017 , p. 3) argue that “since direct influence on policy and government is primarily achieved through offline modes, online participation is more effective when it translates to traditional offline participation.” Some scholars have found that politicians are dismissive of online forms of contact ( Chen et al, 2018 ). As such, if a particular group, such as youth, is only contacting officials online and not offline, their voice may not be heard as strongly as those who use offline forms or engage in both online and offline forms of contacting.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Participatory Inequality Across Countries: Contacting Public Officials Online and Offline

Boulianne

2022

Social Science Computer Review

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The Internet offers low-cost ways to participate in political life, which reduces the motivation required to participate and thus potentially reduces inequalities in participation. I examine online and offline contacting of elected officials using original survey data from Canada, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States collected in 2019 and 2021. Education is a consistent positive predictor of contacting in all countries as well as both modes of contact (online and offline). Income differences are small. Younger people are more likely to contact officials, online and offline, compared to older people. Females are less likely to contact officials, online and offline, compared to males. While political interest, efficacy, online information consumption, and online group ties are believed to lead to more equity in online communication, I do not see strong differences in these variables for online and offline contacting. I conclude by discussing the implications of exclusively online contacting of officials when this form of contact is devalued by elected officials, as well as the implications of participatory inequalities with respect to influencing public policy and access to government services.

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“…Of course, social media also offer more private exchanges, but more attention is focused on the public displays of communication-for example, their lack of civility (Theocharis et al, 2016). Chen et al (2018) find that officials are overwhelmed by social media messages. In some cases, they either ignore these messages or deprioritize them compared to more traditional forms of contact (Chen et al, 2018).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Chen et al (2018) find that officials are overwhelmed by social media messages. In some cases, they either ignore these messages or deprioritize them compared to more traditional forms of contact (Chen et al, 2018). Also, in China, government officials manipulate social media messages sent to them, which may lead to increased political efficacy if citizens think the exchanges are authentic, but reduce it if the citizens discover the exchanges are inauthentic (Pan and Chen, 2018).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Powerless in the digital age? A systematic review and meta-analysis of political efficacy and digital media use

Boulianne

Oser

Hoffmann

2023

New Media & Society

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Many citizens feel powerless in the current globalized political context, despite the potential of digital media to increase their perceptions of being informed about politics and expand their opportunities to interact with elected officials to try to influence government decisions. We analyzed 193 studies to document the most popular ways to conceptualize, measure, and model political efficacy when also studying digital media. Furthermore, we conducted a meta-analysis of correlations. We find that the positive estimates are larger, on average, when considering internal political efficacy and smaller but still positive when considering external political efficacy. We also examine how the relationships differ according to the type of media use and political system, whether authoritarian (e.g. China) or democratic. We propose a theoretical framework that considers reciprocal effects. Online information may contribute to feelings of being informed about politics and feelings of being informed lead to online political participation.

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Do Elected Officials Listen to Constituents on Social Media? Survey Evidence From Local Politicians in the United States

Cited by 4 publications

References 29 publications

Who Leads? Who Follows? Measuring Issue Attention and Agenda Setting by Legislators and the Mass Public Using Social Media Data

Who Leads? Who Follows? Measuring Issue Attention and Agenda Setting by Legislators and the Mass Public Using Social Media Data

Participatory Inequality Across Countries: Contacting Public Officials Online and Offline

Powerless in the digital age? A systematic review and meta-analysis of political efficacy and digital media use

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