From Attention to Dialogue: Does Audience Engagement Reinforce Constructive Cross-Party Communication?

TL;DR

This study investigates how audience reactions on social media influence elite behavior in cross-partisan interactions, revealing that engagement fosters more constructive and deliberative discourse among politicians.

Contribution

It demonstrates that audience engagement on social media creates a feedback loop that encourages elites to adopt more positive and reasoning-based communication strategies in cross-party exchanges.

Findings

Audience engagement increases likelihood of future cross-talk.

Engagement promotes constructive rhetorical strategies.

Audience reactions are linked to more positive discourse.

Abstract

While existing works have emphasized how elites shape mass opinion, we ask whether the reverse also holds: do audience reactions on social media actively shape elite behavior? We examine this question through the lens of cross-partisan interactions (CPIs), which can either foster deliberation or deepen polarization. Using a dataset of over 1.1 million cross-party retweets, replies, and mentions between U.S. state legislators and their audiences on Twitter/X (2020-2021), we first establish baseline patterns of engagement: Democrats gain modest engagement in replies and mentions, while Republicans often face penalties in direct cross-party interactions. Building on this, we show that audience engagement produces a feedback loop that conditions future elite behavior. Following highly visible CPIs, legislators are not only more likely to engage again in cross-talk, but also shift their rhetorical strategies. Engagement consistently promotes causal reasoning, subjective language, and positive-emotion framing in subsequent CPIs. These findings suggest a positive association between audience engagement and constructive cross-party discourse among elites, challenging overly simplified interpretations in the literature that emphasize social media as a primary driver of rising or falling polarization.