Journal article
The national network of US state legislators on Twitter
Political science research and methods, Vol.13(4), pp.1042-1054
10/2025
DOI: 10.1017/psrm.2024.52
Abstract
Abstract Networks among legislators shape politics and policymaking within legislative institutions. In past work on legislative networks, the ties between legislators have been defined on those who serve in the same legislature or chamber. Online information networks, which have been found to play important roles in legislative communication at the national level, are not bounded by individual legislative bodies. We collect original data for over four thousand US state legislators and study patterns of connection among them on Twitter. We look at three types of Twitter networks—follower, retweets, and mentions. We describe these networks and estimate the relationships between ties and salient attributes of legislators. We find that networks are organized largely along geographic and partisan lines and that identity attributes—namely gender and race—exhibit strong associations with the formation of ties.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- The national network of US state legislators on Twitter
- Creators
- Ishita Gopal - Washington University in St. LouisTaegyoon Kim - Korea Advanced Institute of Science and TechnologyNitheesha Nakka - Pennsylvania State UniversityFrederick J. Boehmke - University of IowaJeffrey J. Harden - University of Notre DameBruce A. Desmarais - Pennsylvania State University
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Political science research and methods, Vol.13(4), pp.1042-1054
- DOI
- 10.1017/psrm.2024.52
- ISSN
- 2049-8470
- eISSN
- 2049-8489
- Publisher
- CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS
- Number of pages
- 13
- Grant note
- National Science Foundation: 2318460
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (Award Abstract Number: 2318460).
- Language
- English
- Electronic publication date
- 10/16/2024
- Date published
- 10/2025
- Academic Unit
- Political Science
- Record Identifier
- 9984737460102771
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