We mapped the tweets of 520 US Congress members, focusing on analyzing their engagement with two broad topics: first, the COVID-19 pandemic, and second, the recent wave of anti-racist protest. We find that, in discussing COVID-19, Democrats frame the issue in terms of public health, while Republicans are more likely to focus on small businesses and the economy. When looking at the discourse around anti-Black violence, we find that Democrats are far more likely to name police brutality as a specific concern. In contrast, Republicans not only discuss the issue far less, but also keep their terms more general, as well as criticizing perceived protest violence.
@article{arxiv.2008.03263,
title = {COVID, BLM, and the polarization of US politicians on Twitter},
author = {Anmol Panda and Divya Siddarth and Joyojeet Pal},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2008.03263},
year = {2020}
}