Political Elites in the Attention Economy: Visibility Over Civility and Credibility?

TL;DR

This study examines how US state legislators' online visibility on Twitter and Facebook is affected by posting low-credibility or uncivil content, revealing platform-specific and ideological differences in engagement.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the online behavior of state legislators, highlighting platform and ideology effects on content visibility and civility.

Findings

Low-credibility content increases attention among Republicans.

Uncivil content receives less attention on Twitter.

Platform differences influence posting patterns and engagement.

Abstract

Elected officials have privileged roles in public communication. In contrast to national politicians, whose posting content is more likely to be closely scrutinized by a robust ecosystem of nationally focused media outlets, sub-national politicians are more likely to openly disseminate harmful content with limited media scrutiny. In this paper, we analyze the factors that explain the online visibility of over 6.5K unique state legislators in the US and how their visibility might be impacted by posting low-credibility or uncivil content. We conducted a study of posting on Twitter and Facebook (FB) during 2020-21 to analyze how legislators engage with users on these platforms. The results indicate that distributing content with low-credibility information attracts greater attention from users on FB and Twitter for Republicans. Conversely, posting content that is considered uncivil on Twitter receives less attention. A noticeable scarcity of posts containing uncivil content was observed on FB, which may be attributed to the different communication patterns of legislators on these platforms. In most cases, the effect is more pronounced among the most ideologically extreme legislators. Our research explores the influence exerted by state legislators on online political conversations, with Twitter and FB serving as case studies. Furthermore, it sheds light on the differences in the conduct of political actors on these platforms. This study contributes to a better understanding of the role that political figures play in shaping online political discourse.