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Title: Relationships Among Twitter Conversation Networks, Language Use, and Congressional Voting
Creator: Hemphill, Libby, Otterbacher, Jahna, Shapiro, Matthew A.
Date: 2012-12-20, 2012
Description: As Twitter becomes a more common means for officials to communicate with their constituents, it becomes more important that we understand just...
Show moreAs Twitter becomes a more common means for officials to communicate with their constituents, it becomes more important that we understand just how that communication relates to other political activities. Using data from 411 members of Congress' Twitter activity during the summer of 2011, we examine relationships among the resulting conversation networks, language use, and political behavior. The social networks that result from their communications have surprisingly low density and high diameter, indicating a level of independence that is surprising for a group so tightly connected offline. Our findings also indicate that officials frequently use Twitter to advertise their political positions and to provide information but rarely to request political action from their constituents or to recognize the good work of others. Our analysis suggests strong relationships between anti-social behaviors indicated by the loosely connected network and low incidence of pro-social conversations and polarized or extreme Congressional voting records.
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Title: Learning the Lingo? Gender, Prestige and Linguistic Adaptation in Review Communities
Creator: Hemphill, Libby, Otterbacher, Jahna
Date: 2011-11-19, 2012-02
Publisher: ACM Press
Description: Women and men communicate differently in both face-to- face and computer-mediated environments. We study linguistic patterns considered...
Show moreWomen and men communicate differently in both face-to- face and computer-mediated environments. We study linguistic patterns considered gendered in reviews contributed to the Internet Movie Database. IMDb has been described as a male-majority community, in which females contribute fewer reviews and enjoy less prestige than males. Analyzing reviews posted by prolific males and females, we hypothesize that females adjust their communication styles to be in sync with their male counterparts. We find evidence that while certain characteristics of “female language” persevere over time (e.g., frequent use of pronouns) others (e.g., hedging) decrease with time. Surprisingly, we also find that males often increase their use of “female” features. Our results indicate, that even when they resemble men’s reviews linguistically, women’s reviews still enjoy less prestige and smaller audiences.
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Title: Looking for (Lesbian) Love: Social Media Subtext Readings of Rizzoli and Isles
Creator: Hemphill, Libby
Date: 2015, 2015
Description: Paper presented at #IR16 the annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers
Paper presented at #IR16 the annual conference of the...
Show morePaper presented at #IR16 the annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers
Paper presented at #IR16 the annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers
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Title: Tweet Acts: How Constituents Lobby Congress via Twitter
Creator: Hemphill, Libby, Roback, Andrew
Date: 2014, 2014
Description: Twitter is increasingly becoming a medium through which constituents can lobby their elected representatives in Congress about issues that...
Show moreTwitter is increasingly becoming a medium through which constituents can lobby their elected representatives in Congress about issues that matter to them. Past research has focused on how citizens communicate with each other or how members of Congress (MOCs) use social media in general; our research examines how citizens communicate with MOCs. We contribute to existing literature through the careful examination of hundreds of citizen-authored tweets and the development of a categorization scheme to describe common strategies of lobbying on Twitter. Our findings show that contrary to past research that assumed citizens used Twitter to merely shout out their opinions on issues, citizens utilize a variety of sophisticated techniques to impact political outcomes.
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Title: What's Congress Doing on Twitter?
Creator: Hemphill, Libby, Otterbacher, Jahna, Shapiro, Matthew A.
Date: 2013-10-23, 2012-10-23
Description: As Twitter becomes a more common means for officials to communicate with their constituents, it becomes more important that we understand how...
Show moreAs Twitter becomes a more common means for officials to communicate with their constituents, it becomes more important that we understand how officials use these communication tools. Using data from 380 members of Congress’ Twitter activity during the winter of 2012, we find that officials frequently use Twitter to advertise their political positions and to provide information but rarely to request political action from their constituents or to recognize the good work of others. We highlight a number of differences in communication frequency between men and women, Senators and Representatives, Republicans and Democrats. We provide groundwork for future research examining the behavior of public officials online and testing the predictive power of officials’ social media behavior.
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Title: Chicago Politicians on Twitter
Creator: Hemphill, Libby, Shapiro, Matthew A., Otterbacher, Jahna
Date: 2012-03-12, 2012-03-12
Description: This paper uses data from 1,042 tweets posted by or mentioning Chicago Aldermen or Mayor Rahm Emanuel to examine how Chicago politicians use...
Show moreThis paper uses data from 1,042 tweets posted by or mentioning Chicago Aldermen or Mayor Rahm Emanuel to examine how Chicago politicians use social media. Twitter provides a public communication medium in which constituents and their representatives can have two-way conversations that others can witness and record, and we used qualitative and social network methods to examine conversations between Chicagoans and representatives in city government. We coded the contents of each tweet over the two-week time period (e.g., official business, fundraising) and created representations of the social networks created by the users’ following behaviors. These networks indicate who receives politicians’ tweets and help identify the audiences for political messaging in social media. Our analysis indicates that Chicago’s Aldermen and Mayor use Twitter for social conversations more often than political ones, and that only a small number of Aldermen dominate the resulting conversation networks.
Sponsorship: Social Network Research Group at IIT, IIT Graduate College
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