What Goes Around, Rebounds
THE ECHO: Weekly Roundup of Political Discussion on Twitter (May 24–30, 2018)
Politics and entertainment crossed paths again on Twitter this week as Roseanne Barr’s racist tweet about Valerie Jarrett drove online conversation and prompted ABC to cancel the eponymous show, which had been revived recently. The #MeToo movement was started with revelations about Harvey Weinstein and his multiple indictments this week drove up use of the hashtag significantly.
President Trump was busy this week on the platform blaming Democrats for missing migrant children, ABC for not apologizing to him for unfair treatment, and Jeff Sessions for not telling him he’d recuse himself on the Russia probe. A GOP congressman and a governor, who was a rising star, both exited this week.
Roseanne Barred
The Valerie Jarrett tweet crossed the line and Roseanne Barr learned what we have found over and over on Twitter: you cannot uncross that line even if you apologize quickly, which she did. The rationale, however, didn’t help. Barr, at the same time, took responsibility and blamed use of Ambien, ascribing her lapse in judgment to use of the drug.
The dominance of the controversy fueled a quick-turn media study by Media Matters, which found that cable news covered Roseanne for over 10 hours while the revised Hurricane Maria death toll in Puerto Rico got just over 30 minutes.
Sanofi Head of Media Relations Ashleigh Koss dropped a masterfully Twitter-friendly response, “While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication.”
Tweets about Roseanne spiked 811 percent on close to 1.7 million related tweets without much heavy lifting from Jarrett. As Ted Cruz learned from Mark Hamill, the rebuttal is often better than initial charge when the latter fully understands the platform.
Weinstein Indicted
As our research has shown, the #MeToo movement took off with the Weinstein revelations and has been sustained by speeches, marches, and other firings of men for harassing women in the workplace.
This week, the principal target of the movement was indicted for rape and other sexual misconduct, leveraging his power in the entertainment industry over women who worked for him.
As the chart below demonstrates, the initial use of the hashtag peaked early with over 900,000 related tweets, well before #TimesUp was unveiled as an organization to help women in the industry fight harassment.
The overall trend was down through late April to less than 124,000 related tweets. But with the sentencing of Bill Cosby and the Weinstein indictments, it has rebounded to over 480,000.
This shows how dependent upon news the movement is for interest on the platform. It remains to be seen if #MeToo becomes a political force but it holds widespread support, particularly among women.
Trump Tweetstorms
The tweeter-in-chief had a typically busy week on his favorite social media platform. Trump was under fire bystories and conflicting charges about migrant children getting lost by the Department of Health and Human Services so he blamed his predecessor.
Trump also echoed Rep. Trey Gowdy’s (R-SC-04) belief that Attorney General Jeff Sessions should have told the president he would have recused himself ahead of the Russia investigation.
Finally, Trump weighed in on the cable-news dominant issue of Roseanne’s tweet but only to wonder why he had not gotten an apology from ABC’s Bob Iger for Brian Ross’s reporting, which got him suspended.
All of this activity amounted to an above-average week for the president on Twitter. While Trump’s related post volume was off one percent this week it attracted close to 6.8 million posts, amounting to about 400,000 more than his rolling average since we began tracking in summer 2017.
While President Trump’s polls did not move significantly — he maintained a negative 8.9 percent average job approval over the period of this report — he appears to be rebounding off his low on December 13, 2017 of -21.1 percent.
GOP Exits
This week saw another pair of good-byes from Republicans leaving office, this time not by choice. Embattled Missouri Governor Eric Greitens chose to resign on Friday rather than face impeachment and prosecution, leaving his Lt. Governor Michael Parson to take over the remaining term ending in January 2021.
While Grietens’ job approval rating had dropped down to 33 percent by late April (while not reported, it was likely lower this week) tweets about the outgoing governor were up 376 percent this week on relatively few posts (54,430) for a sex-and-money scandal-impeachment-prosecution-resignation.
This week Rep. Tom Garrett (R-VA-05) decided to retire at the end of his term and foregoing a reelection campaign, citing a long-term battle with alcoholism. Beyond his personal battles, reports by anonymous aides charged the congressman with using them as personal valets for his family.
While Twitter buzz about Garrett was up 744 percent from last week, his announcement drew barely a whisper with just over 12,000 related tweets. Garrett had won his district by 16 points in 2016 but the seat was targeted by Democrats and his challenger had outraised him significantly and had almost twice as much cash on hand as of the mid-April 2018 FEC report.
“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 May 24–30, 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 two editions of The ECHO Quarterly, summarizing broader themes this research can teach political managers and their principals.
