THE ECHO: Weekly Roundup of Political Discussion on Twitter (April 5-April 11, 2018)
Privacy, Trade, and Syria Dominate Twitter in the United States, Political Considerations Move the Midterms, and the FBI Raids President Trump’s Lawyer’s Home and Office
War on several fronts loomed over Twitter this week in the United States. President Trump’s personal attorney was raided by the FBI. Mark Zuckerberg was ambushed, somewhat ineffectively, by almost half of the United States Senate during two days of hearings on Facebook’s privacy failures. The trade war-fueled volley of tweets continued with China and some progress may be on the horizon. A chemical attack in Syria stirred the commander-in-chief to tweet retaliation intentions. In the campaign war for control over Capitol Hill, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan announced he’s out, Florida Governor Rick Scott is in, and Democratic Senator Joe Manchin considered a party switch, while Scott Pruitt, amazingly, still has a job at EPA.
FBI Raids Trump’s Attorney
By far, the newsmaker who had the worst week in politics was Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen, whose home and office were raided by the FBI. The stated reason was documents related to the “Access Hollywood” tape but it also potentially opens the door to a combination of Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and payments to Stephanie Clifford (a.k.a. Stormy Daniels) that can be viewed as fraudulent campaign contributions. Tweets including Trump’s attorney’s name and (and mine) and Twitter account (follow him @MichaelCohen212) were up 3,160 percent to 1,009,232. Last week there were only 30,956 about him (and, ostensibly, me).
As I have learned over the course of Mr. Cohen’s various battles with the media (Says Who?), my mentions spike because many Twitter users are prone to mixing up names of famous (notorious?) and less famous people, like myself. The good news for Counselor Cohen and Professor Cohen alike, is that Twitter moves on quickly as demonstrated by the shifts in who and what we cover in The ECHO each week. But it is unlikely that the story will end for him soon, which means that from time to time I will have well-intentioned family, friends, and colleagues encourage me to change my Twitter username. For new candidates with common names this highly recommended. For others: I recommend A/B tested keyboard shortcut responses and .gifslike this one.
Mark Zuckerberg Battles Congress
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, an ironically private person, sat and answered questions alone in Senate hearings this week focused on his company’s failure to defend user privacy. The ramp-up to the meetings was fierce and both Facebook and Zuckerberg were the target of more than two million tweets (1.8 million for Facebook and close to 445,000 for Zuckerberg). As Zuckerberg testified alone, tweets about him surged 545 percent from the previous week while Facebook itself was up 108 percent.
Analyzing the data, however, it is clear that both the CEO and the company did relatively well in a difficult situation. Many of the tweets and reaction were focused on how little the Senators seemed to understand the platform and much of the time Zuckerberg testified was spent answering seemingly elementary questions about how it worked. While competing regulatory options were offered during the sessions, none appears to be immediately forthcoming, and Zuckerberg, gamely, offered to help, knowing he was there to apologize do no harm. The lesson for political managers: listen to your pros and execute the plan. Zuckerberg did and his company’s stock rallied.
President Trump Advances in Trade and Syrian Wars
Twitter diplomacy continues as President Trump continues to spawn discussion on the platform about tariffs and a #TradeWar, mainly focused (for now) on China. Chatter on this topic was up 45 percent from last week on close to 300,000 related tweets. Trump himself fueled the surge with tweets charging that China has had a trade surplus with the United States for 40 years and that “[t]he U.S. is losing $500 billion a year.”
China has moved to open markets for American automobiles, intellectual property, and technology transfers but they claim this is not in reaction to Trump’s threats. In response to the moves, Trump was unsarcastically careful to not claim victory over China, instead praising President Xi for making “great progress together.” Regardless of China’s face-saving comments, it is clear that Trump won the battle by effectively using public tariff threats. Tweets including the president were up 21 percent over last week but still remain below our rolling average for him since late last summer (6.2 million vs. 6.5 million).
In other, more pressing news, Trump warned Russia this week that the chemical attack against Syrian rebels will not go unanswered. As of this writing, no military response has been taken but it is likely that the administration will launch some kind of limited attack on Syria in the next few days, based on his statements. Tweets about Syria were up 501 percent from last week on 1.5 million related posts while tweets about Russia were up 25 percent, on 1.3 million related posts. As President Trump would say, stay tuned.
GOP Gives and Holds Ground
The biggest political news of the week was that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has decided to leave his post and return home after his term is completed. As one of the top leaders of the Republican party for several years, and a prolific fundraiser, it is a big loss that also leaves his district open and now a toss-up in the upcoming November midterms. Aside from Trump’s attorney, Speaker Ryan was the second most-tweeted about newsmaker on our list this week with more three-quarters of a million posts, up 252 percent from last week.
In other campaign news, Republican Florida Governor Rick Scott made his expected decision to enter the race against Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson official, driving up tweets about the latter 642 percent from last week to more than four times his average (more than 41,000 tweets vs. about 11,000 tweets). Nelson is a consistent resident in our Top Five Toss-Ups and this makes matters much worse for him. Expect to see more of him and Scott in the news, on Twitter, and in The ECHO.
Two oddities: A party-switch boomlet spiked Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin’s twitter volume, up 848 percent form last week but only on less than 7,000 tweets. Finally, Scott Pruitt continues to hold on to his job as the EPA administrator despite tweets about him up 88 percent from last week. Too much going on for Trump to focus on him? Based on our trending data, do not expect this to continue for very long.
“The ECHO” is a publication of The George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management (GSPM). This edition covers political activity on Twitter in the United States April 5–11, 2018. All data from this post, as well as our methodology, is available on our PEORIA Project website and weekly by email (subscribe here). Also available on our website is the first edition of The ECHO Quarterly, summarizing three big things this research can teach campaigns and elected officials.
