Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-2018
Department
Political Science
Language
English
Publication Title
Social Media and Society
Abstract
This article is based on a content analysis of the 17,811 Instagram posts made by all 534 members of the United States Congress who were seated for the duration of the first 6 months of the 115th session. I find that women are significantly more likely than men to have an Instagram account. Senators and women post significantly more times to their accounts. And a member’s personal characteristics, such as their chamber, party, and age, had significant effects on the type of content posted to Instagram. I conclude that members of Congress use Instagram similarly to how they use other social media platforms, that parties in and out of power use Instagram in substantively different ways, and that the more personal accounts of younger members suggest future changes in Congressional representation.
DOI
10.1177/2056305118813373
Recommended Citation
O'Connell, David. "#Selfie: Instagram and the United States Congress." Social Media and Society 4, no. 4 (2018). (Article published online November 19, 2018) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305118813373
Comments
This published version is made available on Dickinson Scholar with the permission of the publisher. For more information on the published version, visit SAGE's Website.
© 2018. This publication is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.