Public Officials and Social Media

Public officials are adopting social media at increasing rates, and this project aims to understand the impact of that adoption. Using data from Twitter, primarily, we explore how officials, both elected and appointed, frame issues such as climate change. We also study how social media use impacts communication with constituents and civic engagement.

Team

Dr. Libby Hemphill, Dr. Jahna Otterbacher, Dr. Matthew Shapiro, Andrew Roback, Charise Angderson, Drexler James, Amy Paslak, W. David Work

Presentations and Publications

  • Hemphill, L., Otterbacher, J., and Shapiro, M.A. (2013) What’s Congress Doing on Twitter? Proceedings of the 2013 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, San Antonio, TX. (slides | paper)
  • Roback, A. and Hemphill, L. (2013) “I’d have to vote against you”: Issue Campaigning via Twitter. Extended Abstracts of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, San Antonio, TX. (extended abstract)
  • Otterbacher, J., Shapiro, M.A., and Hemphill, L. Tweeting Vertically? Elected Officials’ Interactions with Citizens on Twitter. Presented at the International Conference on e-Democracy and Open Government-Asia, Singapore.
  • Hemphill, L., Otterbacher, J., and Shapiro, M.A. (2012) Relationships Among Twitter Conversation Networks, Language Use, and Congressional Voting. International Communication Association Conference, Phoenix, AZ, May 24-28. (slides)
  • Hemphill, L., Otterbacher, J. and Shapiro, M.A. (2012) Everyday Politics: Engaging Chicago Politicians on Twitter.  Midwest Political Science Association Conference, Chicago, IL, April 12-15. (slides | paper)
  • Shapiro, M.A., Hemphill, L., and Otterbacher, J. (2012) Doing What I Say: Connecting Congressional Social Media Behavior and Congressional Voting. Midwest Political Science Association Conference, Chicago, IL, April 12-15.  (slides | paper)
  • Hemphill, L., Otterbacher, J., and Shapiro, M.A. (2011) Going ‘Bald on Record’: Relationships Among Public Officials’ Social Media Behavior and Language Use. Korean Association for Public Administration and American Society for Public Administration Joint International Conference: Seoul, Korea, October 28-29.

Research Tools and Datasets

Scripts and apps for collecting Twitter data are housed on Github. We provide tools for doing batch lookups of user ideas and a Python app for setting up your own Twitter collector.

See the CaSM Lab Twitter lists page to see some of the officials we’re currently studying.

Media

This project was highlighted in the January 9, 2012 RedEye article, “Follow your leaders: Chicago aldermen slowly but surely getting on the Twitter bandwagon”, by Kalyn Belsha and by a November 1, 2011 Medill Reports article, “There’s potential in Chicago politicians using Twitter, experts say” by Alma Bahman.

Dr. Hemphill was a guest blogger on Follow the Crowd and posted about the CSCW 2013 paper on December 6, 2012.