Engagement with national legislator tweets 2019

As of 2019, a significant share of national-level legislators in select English-language countries were using the online social platform Twitter. In the United States, the median number of tweets per month from national legislators was 79, making them the most engaged legislators on the platform. In contrast, New Zealand's legislators only posted 15 tweets per month.

Average Twitter engagement of national legislators in select English-language countries between January and June 2019

Characteristic	Median tweets per month	Median % of tweets that are retweets	Median likes	Median retweets
United States	79	17	18	5
United Kingdom	70	47	8	2
New Zealand	15	25	6	0
Canada	48	46	5	1
Australia	33	41	10	2

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Release date

May 2020

More information

Region

Worldwide

Survey time period

January to June 2019

Number of respondents

2,180 respondents

Special properties

select English language countries

Supplementary notes

The source analysis "examines more than 1.3 million tweets from 2,180 national-level officials in the United States Congress and parliaments in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It excludes heads of government but includes both upper and lower legislative chambers, where applicable. The research team collected every tweet posted by these legislators between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2019, using the Twitter API."

Rosters were created by "manually identifying all sitting members in each country’s national legislatures and then searching for their Twitter accounts. These lists were continually updated to account for elections, resignations, legislators changing parties and other events. Legislator accounts in the database include official, verified legislator accounts as well as any unofficial accounts that belong to the legislator, such as personal or campaign accounts."

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