Twitter use of national legislators anglophone countries 2019

As of June 2019, a significant share of legislators in select predominantly English-language countries were using the online social platform Twitter. In the United States, 541 legislators served in the government during study, and all of them were active on the account during study period. Overall, there was a total of 2,180 legislators in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand that had a Twitter account, and 2,056 of them had tweeted during study period.

Twitter activity of national-level legislators in select English-language countries between January and June 2019

Characteristic	Total that served in government during study	Had a Twitter account	Tweeted during study period	% of total that tweeted during study period
Australia	257	230	212	83
Canada	445	409	391	88
New Zealand	123	114	105	85
United Kingdom	1,461	886	810	55
United States	541	541	538	99
Total	2,827	2,180	2,056	73

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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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