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The Politics of Prioritization: Senators’ Attention in 140 Characters

Abstract For decades US senators have maximized their limited resources to juggle policy, party politics, and constituents, but the rise of social media sheds new light on how they make these strategic choices. David Mayhew’s seminal study of Congress (1974) argues that lawmakers engage in three types of activities – credit claiming, advertising, and position taking, but equally important is understanding how lawmakers make strategic choices among these activities. Senators’ limited resources and attention forces them to prioritize and make trade-offs among these activities, and new media platforms, like Twitter, offer a window into that decision-making process. This article examines what influences senators’ decisions to publicly communicate these activities on Twitter. By using senators’ daily Twitter activity in 2013 and 2015 as a measure of their individual agenda, I find that senators are most likely to prioritize position-taking activities. Women and committee leaders allocate the most attention to policy positions, but attention to policy may come at a cost. When senators do choose to prioritize policy through position taking, they often make trade-offs that lead to decreased attention to advertising and credit claiming. These activities and the choices among them not only have implications for lawmakers’ behavior in Congress, but also the type of representation and information constituents can expect from their elected leaders.