What are Mayors in the US and Canada Tweeting About?
The Cicero database holds tens of thousands of records of information about political representation and geographic political districts. Cicero customers use these resources in a variety of ways, such as fighting for animal protections in Arizona or building bipartisan Congressional support for climate change legislation. We also maintain social media contacts for over 15,000 elected officials. These days, constituents are increasingly using social media as a way to engage in civic issues and elected officials are conversely using these platforms to communicate with the public. For this reason, we decided to take a look at a small subset of Cicero data — the Twitter accounts for 200+ Mayors — to answer the question: What are Mayors in the United States and Canada talking about on Twitter? See the graphic.
Trending topics
In combing through the data, we found that mayors mostly focus on local issues rather than more broad or national affairs. However, multiple Mayors mentioned Election Day and voting on November 5 (#vote), Veteran’s Day on November 11 (#VeteransDay, #veteransday2019) and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (@mikebloomberg) as rumors dropped about his potential candidacy for president. Earlier in October, we saw lots of Mayors tweeting about the World Series (#WorldSeries), the Canadian federal election on October 21, and Halloween. Lincoln, NE Mayor Leirion Baird even posted costume pictures.
The officials included in this analysis span from large cities, like Lori Lightfoot of Chicago (@LightfootForChi) and Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles (@ericgarcetti), to far smaller and rural locales like Cam Guthrie of Guelph, Ontario (@CamGuthrie) and Jeff Longwell of Wichita, KS (@jefflongwellict). Read here for a more thorough analysis of the urban/rural divide on social media.
For each of the 200+ mayors we sampled, we looked at their 20 most recent Tweets. On average, they issued those posts over roughly 97 days, a rate of 1–2 tweets per week. However, the most frequent Twitter users easily tweet more than 10 times per day.
The best job in politics
That is how former Philadelphia, PA Mayor Michael Nutter described his experience after 2 terms in office (it is also the title of his memoir). “The best job in politics” references the wide range of responsibilities and opportunities to lead civic life available to a Mayor. Importantly, these responsibilities — ranging from chief “consoler” in response to tragedies, to lead civic cheerleader — change both by the day and from city to city. We saw this variety reflected in the Twitter accounts of many Mayors, such as this excerpt from Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg (@Mayor_Steinberg):
Mayor Steinberg (who became mayor in 2016 after serving in the CA legislature since 1998 and Sacramento City Council from 1992–1998) tweets about #VeteransDay, and also a local variant #SacStateVets, for a group representing veterans at Sacramento State University. He highlights local government-led initiatives like a downtown business improvement district (@GreaterBwayDist) and the ribbon cutting to celebrate the restoration of a blighted property into a boutique hotel (called The Greens). Like many mayors, he often recognizes his colleagues in City Council, mentioning several in his last 20 tweets alone. Finally, no mayor can rest in their role as civic cheerleader, and Steinberg tweets for @SlamsonTheLion, the mascot of the NBA’s Sacramento Kings.
We see similar variety in the account of Atlanta Mayor Keisha Bottoms (@KeishaBottoms), who took office in 2018 after serving in City Council since 2010. Bottoms tweets for an ESports convention (@DreamHack) hosted in the city and promotes the city’s New Years Eve celebration #PeachDrop.
Like many mayors, she carves out space to engage in politics, tweeting multiple times for a local Presidential campaign fundraiser for @JoeBiden. On a more serious note, Bottoms tweets about local memorials being created in recognition of dozens of unsolved and controversial murders (#AtlantaChildMurders) from 1979–1981. Finally, many Mayors like Bottoms find space on their account to sprinkle in personal and family anecdotes, like this Tweet:
Natural disasters
One type of event that simultaneously impacts multiple mayors are natural disasters. In September and October, wildfires (such as the #PalisadesFire) and utility blackouts became a major concern for mayors throughout California (where Cicero covers 75 cities). We also recently saw multiple mayors in Florida and nearby states tweeting about Hurricane Dorian (#Dorian), a powerful storm in the Atlantic Ocean. Surprisingly, we did not see any officials discussing the remarkable story of 3 cows swept away in the storm who were later discovered to have swum 2 miles to safety to a remote island in the Outer Banks, NC.
See the tweets yourself
We created the graphic below to scroll through the Mayors listed in the Cicero database who have active Twitter accounts.
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