Different Chambers, Divergent Rhetoric: Institutional Differences and Policy Representation on Social Media

• Author: Sarah A. Smith,Annelise Russell
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X221113017
• Published date: 01 November 2022
• Date: 01 November 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

American Politics Research

2022, Vol. 50(6) 792–797

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X221113017

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Different Chambers, Divergent Rhetoric:

Institutional Differences and Policy

Representation on Social Media

Sarah A. Smith

1

and Annelise Russell

2



Abstract

For the past decade, members of both the House and Senate have increasingly used Twitter to curate a political agenda, but

some are better equipped to drive digital policy conversations—even on a public platform with few constraints, low costs, and

outsized user discretion. This research note explores the variable digital representation between congressional chambers, using

tweets from the 115th Congress to illustrate asymmetric patterns in lawmakers’rhetorical agendas on Twitter and the role of

policy for self-presentation. Senators tweet more frequently, more often about policy, and represent a more d iverse agenda on

the platform. In this note, we suggest senators’additional resources and incentives for policy expe rtise shape important

differences in digital engagement, illustrating the prevailing importance of institutional nuance for understanding how lawmakers

use Twitter to frame their political reputations.

Keywords

congress, Senate, Twitter

Introduction

Members of Congress use social media for reputation

building, and central to that self-presentation is their

legislative agenda. Increasingly, Congress shares policy

information in 280-character quips. Fenno’s (1978) ex-

pectation that lawmakers prioritize good public policy is

somewhat realized on congressional Twitter where policy

accounts for more than half of those tweets (Hemphill

et al., 2021;Russell, 2021). Lawmakers are spending

more time and attention publicizing their policy priorities

for a digital constituency, but how lawmakers present

themselves on Twitter is hardly universal, and the mes-

sage variability has implications for policy and repre-

sentation. Partisanship and elections explain a lot about

lawmakers’self-presentation, but in an era of agenda-

setting on Twitter, we must also consider the institutional

dynamics that inf‌luence digital outreach. Prior research

suggests resource asymmetries and institutional resources

constrain lawmaker behavior (Curry, 2015;Russell, 2021;

Schiller, 1995). In this research note, we assess the re-

alities of those different incentives on lawmakers’policy

statements on Twitter, exploring whether one specif‌ic

difference—chamber—affects the tenor and frequency of

lawmakers’policy agendas online.

The context of policy engagement in the House and Senate

is distinguishable such that we expect the policy rhetoric

shared by members of each chamber to be different. The

Senate and its individual members have long been viewed as

being more inf‌luential and entrepreneurial when it comes to

the policy process, and we assess whether those assumptions

extend to reputation-building on Twitter. Most research on

congressional messaging focuses on one chamber or makes

general assumptions across both, but we reveal chamber

nuance by comparing differences in lawmakers’digital

agenda-setting.

In our research note, we examine tweets by both House

and Senate off‌icial accounts during the 115th Congress to

explain differences in policy representation. We illustrate that

senators are more likely to amplify an active policy agenda,

using Twitter more often to articulate their policy priorities by

communicating a diverse portfolio of issue interests. The

implications of these chamber differences mean that how we

understand digital communication in Congress is funda-

mentally shaped by the specif‌ic chamber we sample from,

1

University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA

2

University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

Corresponding Author:

Annelise Russell, University of Texas at Austin, 158 W 21st ST STOP A1800

Batts Hall 2.116, Austin, TX 78712, USA.

Email: anneliserussell8892@gmail.com