Research

Published Papers

• The National Network of U.S. State Legislators on Twitter
  Political Science Research and Methods 2024
  With Ishita Gopal, Nitheesha Nakka, Jeffrey Harden, Frederick Boehmke, Bruce Desmarais
  
  Abstract

  A lot of attention has been paid to studying the online activity of the members of the United States Congress. This scrutiny has not been extended to state legislators. Very few studies exist which catalogue why state legislators connect and communicate with one another online in the ways they do. Inspired by this question and building on studies which have analyzed online communication of members of national legislatures, this paper aims to systematically analyze state legislator relationships in the online environment. We collect original data for 4000+ legislators and study patterns of connection and communication of state legislators on Twitter. The results from this study will help better understand what motivates tie formation in the online environment and if these patterns of connection conform to or can predict offline relationships. We test the impact of variables such as party affiliation, state, chamber, cohort, gender, and policy area focus on the organization of these online networks. We look at three main types of networks that can arise due to participation on Twitter - follower, retweets and mentions. We also aggregate the ties to infer dynamics between states.
• Violent Political Rhetoric on Twitter
  Political Science Research and Methods 2023
  * Recipient of 2021 John Sprague Award from the Political Networks Section, American Political Science Association
  Abstract

  Violent hostility between ordinary partisans is undermining American democracy. Social media is blamed for rhetoric threatening violence against political opponents and implicated in offline political violence. Focusing on Twitter, I propose a method to identify such rhetoric and investigate substantive patterns associated with it. Using a data set surrounding the 2020 Presidential Election, I demonstrate that violent tweets closely track contentious politics offline, peaking in the days preceding the Capitol Riot. Women and Republican politicians are targeted with such tweets more frequently than non-Republican and men politicians. Violent tweets, while rare, spread widely through communication networks, reaching those without direct ties to violent users on the fringe of the networks. This paper is the first to make sense of violent partisan hostility expressed online, contributing to the fields of partisanship, contentious politics, and political communication.
• Attention to the COVID-19 Pandemic on Twitter: Partisan Differences among U.S. State Legislators
  Legislative Studies Quarterly 2022
  With Nitheesha Nakka, Ishita Gopal, Bruce Desmarais, Abigail Mancinelli, Jeffrey Harden, Hyein Ko, Frederick Boehmke
  
  Abstract

  Subnational governments in the United States have taken the lead on many aspects of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Variation in government activity across states offers the opportunity to analyze responses in comparable settings. We study a common and informative activity among state officials—state legislators’ attention to the pandemic on Twitter. We find that legislators’ attention to the pandemic strongly correlates with the number of cases in the legislator’s state, the national count of new deaths, and the number of pandemic-related public policies passed within the legislator’s state. Furthermore, we find that the degree of responsiveness to pandemic indicators differs significantly across political parties, with Republicans exhibiting weaker responses, on average. Lastly, we find significant differences in the content of tweets about the pandemic by Democratic and Republican legislators, with Democrats focused on health indicators and impacts, and Republicans focused on business impacts and opening the economy.

Working Papers

• Public Policymakers’ Online Anti-vaccine Statements: The Important Role of Engagement
  Revise and resubmit at Journal of Politics
  With Xinyu Wang, Sarah Rajtmajer, Jeffrey Harden, Frederick Boehmke, Bruce Desmarais
  
  Abstract

  Public leadership and policy relevant to vaccination are critical to managing public health - a relationship that has been acutely observable since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the U.S., making vaccination policy is largely a state-level endeavor, which places a significant amount of influence in the hands of members of state legislatures. State legislators' public rhetoric on vaccination and media coverage of these policymakers and their attitudes drives public understanding. We compile and analyze original data that covers the tweets of all state legislators on Twitter, focusing specifically on identifying and understanding their expression of anti-vaccine rhetoric. We identify all of their anti-vaccine tweets posted throughout 20 - a year characterized by multiple waves of COVID-19 vaccination policymaking, and analyze features of legislators, states, and timelines that are associated with legislators posting anti-vaccine tweets. Our primary finding is that legislators who receive more engagement with anti-vaccine tweets are more likely to post anti-vaccine content in the future. This result suggests that interventions to limit engagement with policymakers' anti-vaccine rhetoric may discourage future anti-vaccine posts. We also see strong partisan differences in anti-vaccine tweet behaviors, and find some association with the severity of the pandemic in the legislators' states.
• The Effects of Partisan Elites’ Violent Rhetoric on Support for Political Violence
  Revise and resubmit at Political Behavior
  Abstract

  Violent partisan hostility is undermining American democracy. How does partisan elites’ violent rhetoric shape support for political violence? Focused on social media communication where individuals are exposed to elite messages from both sides of the partisan divide, I conduct an online experiment to examine the impact of co-party and opposing party elites’ violent rhetoric on support for political violence and the medating role of emotions in the process. Drawing insights from theories of opinion leadership and inter-group conflict, I demonstrate that co-party (but not opposing party) elites’ violent rhetoric increases support for violence and that partisans fail to countervail against elites’ violent rhetoric. Further, I show that fear mediates the inflaming effect whereas anger, disgust, and sadness suppress it. This paper is among the first to make sense of the effects of elite rhetoric on violent partisan hostility, advancing knowledge in political violence, political communication, and political psychology.

Work in Progress

• Polarization and Science in Public Policymaking: An Analysis of U.S. Policy Documents
  With Alexander Furnas, Dashun Wang
  
• Why Do Members of Congress Use Moral Rhetoric, and How Did It Evolve?
  With Juyeon Julia Park
  
• State Policy Leadership and Followership During the COVID-19 Pandemic
  With Frederick Boehmke, Jeffrey Harden, Bruce Desmarais, Ishita Gopal, Samauel Harper, Johabed Olvera
  
• Network Shutdowns during Mass Uprisings in Dictatorships
  With Wonjun Song
  
• Legacies of Party Origins on the Fate of Former Authoritarian Ruling Parties
  With Wonjun Song
  
• Elite Narratives on Immigrants in South Korea
  With Boyoon Lee, Seungwoo Han