TY - JOUR
T1 - Liberal and Conservative Values
T2 - What We Can Learn From Congressional Tweets
AU - Jones, Kevin L.
AU - Noorbaloochi, Sharareh
AU - Jost, John T.
AU - Bonneau, Richard
AU - Nagler, Jonathan
AU - Tucker, Joshua A.
N1 - Funding Information:
Kevin L. Jones, Sharareh Noorbaloochi, John T. Jost, Richard Bonneau, Jonathan Nagler, and Joshua A. Tucker, Social Media and Political Participation (SMaPP) Lab, New York University (NYU). This research was supported by the INSPIRE program of the National Science Foundation (Awards # SES-1248077 and # SES-1248077-001) as well as New York University’s Research Investment Fund (RIF) and Global Institute for Advanced Study (GIAS). We gratefully acknowledge the support of computer programmers Duncan Penfold-Brown and Jonathan Ronen and the advice of John Hibbing, Thomas Rudolph, and three anonymous reviewers concerning manuscript revision. An earlier draft of this article was submitted as a masters’ thesis to the Department of Psychology at NYU. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to John T. Jost, Department of Psychology, 6 Washington Place, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10003. E-mail: john. [email protected]
Funding Information:
Kevin L. Jones, Sharareh Noorbaloochi, John T. Jost, Richard Bonneau, Jonathan Nagler, and Joshua A. Tucker, Social Media and Political Participation (SMaPP) Lab, New York University (NYU). This research was supported by the INSPIRE program of the National Science Foundation (Awards # SES-1248077 and # SES-1248077-001) as well as New York University's Research Investment Fund (RIF) and Global Institute for Advanced Study (GIAS). We gratefully acknowledge the support of computer programmers Duncan Penfold-Brown and Jonathan Ronen and the advice of John Hibbing, Thomas Rudolph, and three anonymous reviewers concerning manuscript revision. An earlier draft of this article was submitted as a masters? thesis to the Department of Psychology at NYU. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to John T. Jost, Department of Psychology, 6 Washington Place, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10003. E-mail: [email protected]
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 International Society of Political Psychology
PY - 2018/4
Y1 - 2018/4
N2 - Past research using self-report questionnaires administered to ordinary citizens demonstrates that value priorities differ as a function of one's political ideology, but it is unclear whether this conclusion applies to political elites, who are presumably seeking to appeal to very broad constituencies. We used quantitative methods of textual analysis to investigate value-laden language in a collection of 577,555 messages sent from the public Twitter accounts of over 400 members of the U.S. Congress between 2012 and 2014. Consistent with theoretical expectations, we observed that Republican and conservative legislators stressed values of tradition, conformity, and national security (as well as self-direction), whereas Democratic and liberal legislators stressed values of benevolence, universalism, hedonism, and social/economic security (as well as achievement). Implications for the large-scale observational study of political psychology are explored.
AB - Past research using self-report questionnaires administered to ordinary citizens demonstrates that value priorities differ as a function of one's political ideology, but it is unclear whether this conclusion applies to political elites, who are presumably seeking to appeal to very broad constituencies. We used quantitative methods of textual analysis to investigate value-laden language in a collection of 577,555 messages sent from the public Twitter accounts of over 400 members of the U.S. Congress between 2012 and 2014. Consistent with theoretical expectations, we observed that Republican and conservative legislators stressed values of tradition, conformity, and national security (as well as self-direction), whereas Democratic and liberal legislators stressed values of benevolence, universalism, hedonism, and social/economic security (as well as achievement). Implications for the large-scale observational study of political psychology are explored.
KW - Congress
KW - LIWC
KW - Schwartz circumplex model
KW - Twitter
KW - conservatives
KW - federal legislators
KW - liberals
KW - political elites
KW - social media
KW - values
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U2 - 10.1111/pops.12415
DO - 10.1111/pops.12415
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85016716548
SN - 0162-895X
VL - 39
SP - 423
EP - 443
JO - Political Psychology
JF - Political Psychology
IS - 2
ER -