Rhetoric Matters: Party Leaders' Agenda Influence on Twitter

Party leaders exert unparalleled power over the congressional agenda, but these partisan pied pipers are turning to social media to influence the agenda long before final votes. Leaders’ rhetoric and strategic communications are a valuable source of agenda setting power, yet research has not considered how and when leaders shape the debate and set the partisan tone via new media technologies. In a political culture where the latest tweet can set off a political firestorm, political leaders’ social media habits are instrumental in shaping the political narratives coming out of Congress. This project pairs a content analysis of Senate leaders’ tweets with a series of semi-structured interviews to assess how party leaders are shaping the issues that their parties promote and whether that influence is reflected in the tweets of rank-and-file senators.