Grants and Contracts Details
Description
Abstract
Congress is routinely lurching from one disaster to another, but the crisis that remains
constant is the communication crisis — a failure of the technology and information
dissemination that enable Congress to effectively communicate. This project considers how the
staff and professionals that drive the daily operations of Congress have adapted to meet the rapid
pace of news and information, meaning the logistics of daily engagement in Congress mirror that
of a disaster response. I explain how Congress has developed into a crisis communication
operation, pairing 120 interviews of current and former congressional communication
professionals with congressional Twitter data to illustrate how digital media has fueled the very
same power asymmetries we expected new media to disrupt. The power of reputation-building
online and rapid response has elevated Twitter in a way that ultimately constrains what little
capacity lawmakers already had and makes the average member of Congress resource-dependent
in terms of both policy and communication. Funding from the APSA Centennial Center grant
program would support completion of this book project that details how Congress has developed
into a crisis communication operation, providing the resources to merge social media data with
interviews of congressional communication professionals to offer an unprecedented mixed
methods approach to understanding the communication culture in Congress and the implications
for congressional capacity.
Status | Finished |
---|---|
Effective start/end date | 8/24/22 → 12/1/23 |
Funding
- American Political Science Association: $4,500.00
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