The impact of twitter adoption on lawmakers' voting orientations

Reza Mousavi; Bin Gu

doi:10.1287/isre.2018.0791

The impact of twitter adoption on lawmakers' voting orientations

Reza Mousavi, Bin Gu

Information Systems

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

18 Scopus citations

Abstract

Social media has been found to be influential in a variety of contexts. From mobilizing the crowd in social movements to helping refugees settle into a new country, social media has had a significant impact. This study examines the role of social media in Congressional representation in a democratic political system. We intend to assess the impact of U.S. Representatives' Twitter adoption on their voting orientations in the U.S. Congress. In particular, we consider whether the adoption of Twitter by representatives makes them vote more in line with the political ideology of their constituents. Weconstructed a panel data for 445 members of the 111th U.S. House of Representatives across a period of 24 months. We exploited the variation in joining Twitter across representatives to identify the impact of joining and using Twitter on voting orientations. Using fixed effects and difference-in-differences approaches, along with propensity score matching to address potential endogeneity in representatives' Twitter adoption decisions, we found that representatives' adoption of Twitter causes them to vote more in line with their constituents. Furthermore, the effect of Twitter adoption is more salient when a representative's party differs from the party affiliation of the constituent or when Twitter use per capita is higher in the representative's state. To identify the underlying mechanism of influence, we conducted further analysis on one of the important issues in the 111th Congress. Our results indicate that the volume of tweets directed at representatives signals the importance of certain bills to constituents. When representatives vote on bills that are the focus of a large volume of constituents' tweets, they vote in a manner more aligned with their constituents' opinions. Interestingly, the opinions the tweets express do not significantly influence their votes, suggesting that representatives are aware of the potential bias in opinions cascaded in tweets.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	133-153
Number of pages	21
Journal	Information Systems Research
Volume	30
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2018.0791
State	Published - 2019

Keywords

Democratic political system
Difference-in-differences model
Online social media
Panel data
Political ideology
Politics
Sentiment analysis
Societal impact of IS
Twitter
U.S. Congress

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Management Information Systems
Information Systems
Computer Networks and Communications
Information Systems and Management
Library and Information Sciences

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10.1287/isre.2018.0791

Cite this

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title = "The impact of twitter adoption on lawmakers' voting orientations",

abstract = "Social media has been found to be influential in a variety of contexts. From mobilizing the crowd in social movements to helping refugees settle into a new country, social media has had a significant impact. This study examines the role of social media in Congressional representation in a democratic political system. We intend to assess the impact of U.S. Representatives' Twitter adoption on their voting orientations in the U.S. Congress. In particular, we consider whether the adoption of Twitter by representatives makes them vote more in line with the political ideology of their constituents. Weconstructed a panel data for 445 members of the 111th U.S. House of Representatives across a period of 24 months. We exploited the variation in joining Twitter across representatives to identify the impact of joining and using Twitter on voting orientations. Using fixed effects and difference-in-differences approaches, along with propensity score matching to address potential endogeneity in representatives' Twitter adoption decisions, we found that representatives' adoption of Twitter causes them to vote more in line with their constituents. Furthermore, the effect of Twitter adoption is more salient when a representative's party differs from the party affiliation of the constituent or when Twitter use per capita is higher in the representative's state. To identify the underlying mechanism of influence, we conducted further analysis on one of the important issues in the 111th Congress. Our results indicate that the volume of tweets directed at representatives signals the importance of certain bills to constituents. When representatives vote on bills that are the focus of a large volume of constituents' tweets, they vote in a manner more aligned with their constituents' opinions. Interestingly, the opinions the tweets express do not significantly influence their votes, suggesting that representatives are aware of the potential bias in opinions cascaded in tweets.",

keywords = "Democratic political system, Difference-in-differences model, Online social media, Panel data, Political ideology, Politics, Sentiment analysis, Societal impact of IS, Twitter, U.S. Congress",

author = "Reza Mousavi and Bin Gu",

note = "Funding Information: History: Gediminas Adomavicius, Senior Editor; Michael Zhang, Associate Editor Funding: This study was partially funded by Arizona State University Center for Service Leadership, Center for the Study of Economic Liberty, and Dean{\textquoteright}s Excellence in Research Summer Grants. Supplemental Material: The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2018.0791. Funding Information: The authors thank Dr. Gedas Adomavicius (senior editor), Dr. Michael Zhang (associate editor), and the anonymous reviewers who supported us and provided us with helpful guidelines to improve this study. The authors also thank our discussant (Dr. Jason Chan) at the Workshop on Information Systems Economics (WISE 2015) and anonymous reviewers at 2014 INFORMS Conference on Information Systems (CIST 2014) and Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS 2016). The authors are grateful to seminar participants at Georgia Institute of Technology, Michigan State University, Texas A&M University, Nanyang Technological University, and Texas Tech 2015 Big Data Symposium for their constructive feedback and comments. The authors are grateful to political scientists Dr. Georgia Kernell, Dr. Chris Tausanovitch, Dr. Patrick Kenney, Dr. Kim Fridkin, and Dr. Keith Poole who helped us better understand the relevant concepts in their field. The authors are grateful to the data science initiative at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte for their help in collecting data. This study was partially funded by Arizona State University Center for Service Leadership, Center for the Study of Economic Liberty, and Dean's Excellence in Research Summer Grants Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2019, INFORMS.",

year = "2019",

doi = "10.1287/isre.2018.0791",

language = "English (US)",

volume = "30",

pages = "133--153",

journal = "Information Systems Research",

issn = "1047-7047",

publisher = "INFORMS Inst.for Operations Res.and the Management Sciences",

number = "1",

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TY - JOUR

T1 - The impact of twitter adoption on lawmakers' voting orientations

AU - Mousavi, Reza

AU - Gu, Bin

N1 - Funding Information: History: Gediminas Adomavicius, Senior Editor; Michael Zhang, Associate Editor Funding: This study was partially funded by Arizona State University Center for Service Leadership, Center for the Study of Economic Liberty, and Dean’s Excellence in Research Summer Grants. Supplemental Material: The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2018.0791. Funding Information: The authors thank Dr. Gedas Adomavicius (senior editor), Dr. Michael Zhang (associate editor), and the anonymous reviewers who supported us and provided us with helpful guidelines to improve this study. The authors also thank our discussant (Dr. Jason Chan) at the Workshop on Information Systems Economics (WISE 2015) and anonymous reviewers at 2014 INFORMS Conference on Information Systems (CIST 2014) and Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS 2016). The authors are grateful to seminar participants at Georgia Institute of Technology, Michigan State University, Texas A&M University, Nanyang Technological University, and Texas Tech 2015 Big Data Symposium for their constructive feedback and comments. The authors are grateful to political scientists Dr. Georgia Kernell, Dr. Chris Tausanovitch, Dr. Patrick Kenney, Dr. Kim Fridkin, and Dr. Keith Poole who helped us better understand the relevant concepts in their field. The authors are grateful to the data science initiative at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte for their help in collecting data. This study was partially funded by Arizona State University Center for Service Leadership, Center for the Study of Economic Liberty, and Dean's Excellence in Research Summer Grants Publisher Copyright: © 2019, INFORMS.

PY - 2019

Y1 - 2019

N2 - Social media has been found to be influential in a variety of contexts. From mobilizing the crowd in social movements to helping refugees settle into a new country, social media has had a significant impact. This study examines the role of social media in Congressional representation in a democratic political system. We intend to assess the impact of U.S. Representatives' Twitter adoption on their voting orientations in the U.S. Congress. In particular, we consider whether the adoption of Twitter by representatives makes them vote more in line with the political ideology of their constituents. Weconstructed a panel data for 445 members of the 111th U.S. House of Representatives across a period of 24 months. We exploited the variation in joining Twitter across representatives to identify the impact of joining and using Twitter on voting orientations. Using fixed effects and difference-in-differences approaches, along with propensity score matching to address potential endogeneity in representatives' Twitter adoption decisions, we found that representatives' adoption of Twitter causes them to vote more in line with their constituents. Furthermore, the effect of Twitter adoption is more salient when a representative's party differs from the party affiliation of the constituent or when Twitter use per capita is higher in the representative's state. To identify the underlying mechanism of influence, we conducted further analysis on one of the important issues in the 111th Congress. Our results indicate that the volume of tweets directed at representatives signals the importance of certain bills to constituents. When representatives vote on bills that are the focus of a large volume of constituents' tweets, they vote in a manner more aligned with their constituents' opinions. Interestingly, the opinions the tweets express do not significantly influence their votes, suggesting that representatives are aware of the potential bias in opinions cascaded in tweets.

AB - Social media has been found to be influential in a variety of contexts. From mobilizing the crowd in social movements to helping refugees settle into a new country, social media has had a significant impact. This study examines the role of social media in Congressional representation in a democratic political system. We intend to assess the impact of U.S. Representatives' Twitter adoption on their voting orientations in the U.S. Congress. In particular, we consider whether the adoption of Twitter by representatives makes them vote more in line with the political ideology of their constituents. Weconstructed a panel data for 445 members of the 111th U.S. House of Representatives across a period of 24 months. We exploited the variation in joining Twitter across representatives to identify the impact of joining and using Twitter on voting orientations. Using fixed effects and difference-in-differences approaches, along with propensity score matching to address potential endogeneity in representatives' Twitter adoption decisions, we found that representatives' adoption of Twitter causes them to vote more in line with their constituents. Furthermore, the effect of Twitter adoption is more salient when a representative's party differs from the party affiliation of the constituent or when Twitter use per capita is higher in the representative's state. To identify the underlying mechanism of influence, we conducted further analysis on one of the important issues in the 111th Congress. Our results indicate that the volume of tweets directed at representatives signals the importance of certain bills to constituents. When representatives vote on bills that are the focus of a large volume of constituents' tweets, they vote in a manner more aligned with their constituents' opinions. Interestingly, the opinions the tweets express do not significantly influence their votes, suggesting that representatives are aware of the potential bias in opinions cascaded in tweets.

KW - Democratic political system

KW - Difference-in-differences model

KW - Online social media

KW - Panel data

KW - Political ideology

KW - Politics

KW - Sentiment analysis

KW - Societal impact of IS

KW - Twitter

KW - U.S. Congress

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DO - 10.1287/isre.2018.0791

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SN - 1047-7047

VL - 30

SP - 133

EP - 153

JO - Information Systems Research

JF - Information Systems Research

IS - 1

ER -

The impact of twitter adoption on lawmakers' voting orientations

Abstract

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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