Legislator Technology Adoption and Presentation of Self Through Twitter

Abstract

The social networking service Twitter has become increasing popular amongst members of congress as well as ordinary citizens. In this paper, I explore and define theories to explain why state legislators choose to use Twitter, and why they do not. Using three different analyses, I explore twitter adoption at the state and legislator level, as well as analyzing the content of individual Twitter messages. The conclusions are a mixed bag; while I find some evidence of the effects of professional staff on Twitter adoption in states, this does not translate to the individual level. While it is clear that home style messages make up a sizeable portion of state legislator Twitter messages, there is no clear pattern to predict why or how legislators are more or less likely to use different types of Twitter messages.Master of Art