Hey, Retweet Your Legislatures.
They’re using Interpretive Theory, not bad.
Here’s a question for you: Why can social media influencers receive thousands of likes, comments, and off-the-chart engagement levels, but when legislators tweet all we hear are crickets?
Social media is a powerful tool for disseminating information and improving connectivity, and government officials are using it more than we think. Legislators from around the world are using social media platforms to voice their opinion and educate citizens like yourself.
Fun Fact: Researchers have found that government officials particularly love Twitter! Check out this quote from a Pew Research Study:
In the U.S., for example, every serving legislator (541 in total across both houses of Congress) had at least one Twitter account,” and only 3 failed to tweet during the six month study (Devlin et al., 2021).
Pretty much, the entire house and senate are out there tweeting. Have you realized?
Also, if you think these legislative tweeters only post confusing and heavy politics, they’re not. They’re embracing the social media lifestyle. “97% of legislators across these countries who are on Twitter have used a hashtag, and 70% have used an emoji in their tweets.”
Legislators from around the world are using hashtags and emojis to relate to us, wow!
If you think about it, that’s pretty scientific of them. Social science can help understand how and why people behave. So, these high-sitting government officials are using the Interpretive Theory of Communication to grab our attention. Hashtags and emojis fit right into this theory because they act as symbols and texts that can be interpreted differently.
Hashtags and emojis are just symbols and texts meaning different things to different people, but we as humans alter and condense these meanings to represent varying ideologies.
Here’s an example, in 2019, 85% of U.S. legislators used ‘#sotu’ to mean, “The State of the Union” Address. The use of four letters is just as effective as a six syllable phrase!
We need to realize that this use of hashtags as an altered form of communication is finding its way across leaders of different countries. In the same year, ‘#iwd2019’ was used to mean International Women’s Day 2019 and ‘#earthday’ to promote climate change across officials around the globe. Again, short and sweet communication!
We have also discovered that legislatures are falling in love with emojis. These fun, colorful characters are popular with 70% of the studied legislators. However, they are especially favored with officials in the U.S.
Not surprising, the flag emoji is a crowd favorite in this group of political specialists across different countries. It’s a quick way to proudly show patriotism without even typing a word, no matter where you’re from.
It’s interesting to think that politicians are out and about using hashtags, emojis and tweeting, but they are! Government officials are doing their best to reach us, so let’s pay attention. We can learn more and stay informed about our world and society.
Make it a goal to retweet your legislatures!
Devlin, K., Widjaya, R., & Cha, J. (2021, January 13). How Global Legislators Use Twitter. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/05/18/for-global-legislators-on-twitter-an-engaged-minority-creates-outsize-share-of-content/.
