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Article published In:
The Agenda Setting Journal
Vol. 5:2 (2021) ► pp.292–313
Conference papers

Legislative agenda-setting power of social media

#BlackLivesMatter and the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020

| Boston University
| Boston University

In an effort to understand the legislative agenda setting impacts of social media content, the present study analyzes political discourse on Twitter regarding the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. Using a Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic model to dissect the Twitter conversation aimed at Representative Karen Bass, the sponsor of the H.R.7120, in the weeks leading up to the bill’s filing, our analysis of nearly 68,000 tweets posted in the days before the bill’s filing reveals that constituents strongly urged the Representative to work on legislation targeted on police reform – offering evidence of how constituents demanded, and drove, legislative action. Considering our findings, we argue that there is considerable potential for social media to serve as an amplifier of social issues and concerns among constituents. Through this process, we posit that social media can prove to be a vital catalyst in social justice reform.

Keywords: agenda setting, topic modelling, Media Amplification Cycle, police brutality, legislative agenda setting
Article outline
  • Literature review
    • Agenda-setting theory: Seminal work to social media extensions
      • First and second level effects
      • Agenda-setting effects of social media
      • Media coverage and legislative agenda-setting
    • Media Amplification Cycle
    • Theoretical contribution
  • Method
    • Data collection
    • Data analysis
  • Results
  • Discussion
  • References
Published online: 1 February 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/asj.21006.upa
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