Who does the Arizona State Legislature follow on Twitter?
One of the most common concerns in American politics in 2021 is that citizens are occupying different informational ecosystems. With the rise of algorithmically-driven social media targeting, voters may now be consuming entirely different sets of information.
But what about legislators? Are they also living in bubbles or do they rely on the same sources of news?
While we can’t fully know what information they get. However, there is one window into what they see.
Twitter’s transparency
Twitter is one of the most popular platforms for political professionals to get their news. Users receive most of this content from the accounts that they follow and - luckily for our purposes - the accounts they follow are public.
We searched for accounts followed by the 76 members of the Arizona State Legislature with public twitter accounts. This gave us a list of 56,300 accounts that at least one representative or senator followed and 107,818 unique follower-followed relationships. The median legislator followed 805 accounts, though with a wide range across the building. This gives us a window into what legislators see on their timelines when they open up Twitter.
Most legislators follow less than 1,000 accounts, though there are are some that follow many more.
We then looked at which accounts were followed across the Senate and House and broke it down between Democrats and Republicans.
You can access the 500 most popular accounts with the button below. See how followed you might be and conduct your own analysis.
Our findings
Back from checking out the data yourself? Okay, let’s dive into what we found.
Legislators in Arizona like to follow reporters
The most popular accounts across the legislature were a range of other elected officials, official party accounts, and media members. However, unlike in Massachusetts (the only other state in which we’ve conducted this analysis), reporters were much more represented in the Grand Canyon State.
In Massachusetts, the top five accounts were the State House News Service, the Governor, former Speaker, Attorney General, and House Chair of Ways and Means. The top 100 accounts were overwhelmingly members of the legislature.
Top five followed accounts in the MA State House
In Arizona, 5 of the top 11 spots were reporters. Whether this means that legislators in Arizona use twitter for new more often than in Massachusetts or not is another question, but it does seem that the news is a larger share of their followings than in the Bay State.
The top 11 followed accounts in the AZ State House
National news reflects polarization
Legislators follow national news accounts and, as we might expect, we see strong evidence of polarization.
54% of Republicans follow Tucker Carlson, but only 11% follow the Washington Post. Meanwhile, 43% of Democrats follow the Post (similar numbers to the New York Times) but only 5% follow Carlson.
Local media also shows differences, but from a higher baseline. There is a 34-percentage point difference in following @azcentral, but with Democrats at 74% and Republicans at 41%.
Democrats follow Republicans more than vice versa
The only accounts followed by a majority of both parties are members of the media, three Republican current or former elected officials, and the House Republicans account.
Accounts with more than 50% followership from both parties
However, this does not simply seen to be a product of the Republican trifecta and all members of the legislature following those in leadership. Rather, it appears to be a reflection that Democrats are more likely to follow Republicans than Republicans are to follow Democrats.
For example, while 51% of Democrats follow AZHouseGOP, only 24% of Republicans follow AZHouseDems. For the Senate, the splits are 41% Democrats following AZSenateGOP and 14% Republicans following AZSenateDems.
This is also seen at the federal level. Kyrsten Sinema is followed by 27% of Republicans in the State House; Mark Kelly, by only 3%. In fact, 38% of Republicans follow POTUS45, an archive of the Trump Administration account, but zero follow the current POTUS account.
Political differences are apparent
There are some obvious differences in who follows what. The biggest gaps are among elected officials, like Rep. Debbie Lesko (followed by 15% of Dems, 97% of GOP)
Nonetheless, there are some significant differences that go beyond party members. Some of the largest gaps between the parties include:
More Republican: Arizona Free Enterprise Club, Laura Ingraham, Goldwater Institute
More Democratic: Save Our Schools AZ, LUCHA Arizona, Planned Parents Advocates of Arizona
How does Legislata help?
Legislata is productivity software for those working in politics and government. Our aim is to help you get through the busywork of the day faster and better organize the information that comes your way so that you have more time to read outside your Twitter feed. Get in touch to register interest and be alerted when we launch.