Going Viral and Making Waves:

Social Media Use Among Aldermen in Chicago, 2015-2018

Kumar Ramanathan Doctoral Candidate, Northwestern University Thomas Ogorzalek Assistant Professor, Northwestern University

Submitted for the 2018 Midwest Political Science Association Annual Meeting Friday, April 6, 2018

This is a draft, please do not circulate without permission. We are happy to receive comments or questions of all sorts at tko@northwestern.edu

“Don’t make no waves, don’t back no losers.” This classic aphorism, attributed to Alderman Vito Marzullo and redeployed as the insightful title of Milton Rakove’s 1975 ethnography of the mid-20th century Chicago Democratic machine, reveals an age-old view of local politics. Success in politics, in this view, is a function of fitting within an organizational framework, avoiding unnecessary controversy (especially on “cultural” issues on which material compromise is difficult), and raw political skill (those without skills are the “losers”—it’s less obvious precisely which skills are most useful).(Rakove 1975) Successful professional democratic politicians, in this view, will refocus politics on material concerns, and put themselves at the distributional hub in a network of goods suppliers and goods seekers. And their success will be measured not by the transformative legacy of their time in office, but by their longevity in office, which ostensibly reflects their ability to adapt to ever-changing circumstances.

So-called “Amateur Democrats” developed an approach that was almost in direct opposition to the professional perspective. These actors have waged recurrent, intermittent battle with such professional organizations, typically pursuing both procedural goals (like electoral reform or the elimination of corruption) as well as substantive-ideological policy changes, with mixed success.

Those “no-wave” professionals and ideological “amateurs” have represented common approaches to local politics for more than a century. Today, major changes prompt a re-examination of how local political actors engage with their communities. First, ideological and “cultural war” polarization has been spreading into new levels of politics and increasing in intensity over recent decades. Second, some evidence suggests that national controversies are crowding out local and state issues, polarizing subnational electorates. (Hopkins 2018). If this is true, it might be more difficult to avoid controversial national issues in favor of bread-and-butter localism.

Finally, the rise of social media as a means of communication may complicate these matters in unpredictable ways. Actors of all kinds are discovering the power and perils of these online platforms as a site for political engagement. For local politics, one can imagine a myriad of possible changes. Free and widely available communications channels might prompt more frequent information sharing by officials. Interactive platforms such as Facebook might serve as virtual town-halls, where officials can seek and receive feedback about policy from constituents. Their easy, low-cost use and wide availability might allow more voices to enter the public sphere. Conversely, the lingering digital divide, the platform’s emphasis on written English, and other factors might tend to disproportionately exclude others. Exclamatory platforms like Twitter may provide a rapid way to distribute information, or serve as virtual Speaker’s Corners, where inflammatory ranters make waves and splashes. Without a clearer picture of how officials and their constituents use these tools for politics, it is difficult to know which of these is true.

In this paper, part of a larger project on digital civic engagement in a large metropolis, we offer initial answers to some of these questions with a preliminary analysis of social media use by local politicians in Chicago. We investigate whether and how members of the Chicago city council (also known as Aldermen) use Facebook to engage with their constituents. The main questions we will analyze here are situated at the intersection of organizational and ideological politics in big cities, and are a piece of a broader study of burgeoning political organizations and neighborhood-level interactions in large American cities. For the moment, we

focus in on how these representatives are employing this new medium of potential information exchange. Social networks and politics Social networks are a rapidly- and ever-developing area of social and political life, and social scientists are engaged in the similarly ever-developing yeoman’s work of studying whether and how this area of connection matters for politics. In general, analyses of these social media have examined their use by everyday people, used individuals’ posts as a new angle into mass opinion, and how campaigns use these platforms.1 Analyses of how politicians use these fora are much rarer, especially when focusing outside the context of ongoing electoral competition.2 We are more interested in the more quotidian dynamics of these sites and how politicians use them to connect with their constituents. Every new foray into this area is doing new descriptive and analytic work. This is the first study of which we are aware to consider these locally-based pages and groups as a forum for local democracy in the United States. Initial Hypotheses: General Usage Our interest in social media is motivated chiefly by a qualitative desire to understand how these virtual public spaces are operating for local officials. However, to better structure our analyses, we developed several informal hypotheses based on insights about local politics generally, our knowledge of Chicago politics specifically, and broad trends in social-media use: 1: “Old Dogs, New Tricks” Hypothesis First, we hypothesize that (because younger people use social media more) younger politicians will be more likely to use it as well. 2: “Learn on the Job” Hypothesis Second, as a variation of H1 we hypothesize that those who came into office more recently, especially those who came in after the spread of social media will be more likely to use it. 3: “Make Waves” Hypothesis The Make Waves Hypothesis holds that more ideologically-motivated politicians, and those who aspire to higher office, will be more likely than others to take positions on supralocal issues, as well as potentially divisive cultural issues. In Chicago politics, this means that we expect the self-identified members of the Progressive Caucus than their less ideologically-expressive colleagues to be more likely to use social media to make statements about social, ideological, and supralocal issues.3

1 Caton et al (2015), Vaccari et al (2013), Barberá (2015) 2 Larsson and Kalsnes (2014). 3 The progressive caucus is a group of 11-12 aldermen who assert an agenda to “creating a more just and equal Chicago, combating all forms of discrimination, and advancing public policies that offer genuine opportunity to all Chicagoans, especially those who have been left out of our society’s prosperity.” At times, they form a small oppositional caucus to the larger coalition that is generally unanimous and in agreement with the Mayor’s position on all issues. http://chicagoprogressivecaucus.com/

4: Nationalization/Twitterbeef Hypothesis Finally, we conclude with a preliminary analysis of the Nationalization/Twitterbeef Hypothesis, which is premised on the idea that ideological and national issues are more controversial and better understood by the public, so will draw more engagement than posts on other topics. According to this hypothesis, posts about supralocal issues (below, “State and Local Politics” in our content analysis) will draw more engagement from the public. Caveats These data provide a new window into a particular form of official-constituent engagement, and we should be careful to note some of their limits. First, social media entails a significant opt-in component, meaning that many members of this political community may not be part of this conversation. This is especially likely to be true of members of older, lower-income, lower-education, foreign-born, and racial and ethnic minority groups (who are generally less likely to engage in social media). Second, the specific content of these social media posts (local politics), may introduce further bias in the audience, as perhaps those particularly motivated to press certain concerns, and due to algorithms and users’ past behavior these posts may only be visible to those who have previously expressed an interest in local politics. Third, we only observe posts initiated by the aldermen themselves, so cannot necessarily see much about how they are responsive to constituents’ broader ranges of concerns, even those that might come via social media. In most cases, even when others do respond to their posts online, it does not appear that the aldermen begin a conversation in the comments section. On the other hand, we can see how these officials are using their accounts for a certain kind of agenda-setting. Fourth, Chicago has a particularly strong (but not by any means unique) culture of machine-style, insider politics. A great deal of what really “matters” in public decision-making and constituent engagement surely takes place in other settings, much farther from public eye, so conclusions about the policy importance of these sites should certainly be modest in any case. The Facebook Messenger, which allows for private conversations between users away from the bulletin board-style posts, may be the virtual avenue for such side conversations. We cannot observe those. Fifth, the internet is not composed of actual human bodies and persons; it is conceivable that much of the activity we see on these sites is fake, composed by trolls, bots, or other insincere actors. The generally low levels of engagement on the sites, and our spot-checks of particular conversations, mitigate some concerns in this area. The Data The analyses in this paper are based primarily on a data scrape of the public Facebook pages of Chicago’s aldermen from April 2015 (the date of the last municipal election) through to March 2018.

The data gathered from Facebook attributes of the post itself (content and timing, primarily), as well as counts of others’ responses to the post (such as Likes, Comments, and Shares), and ancillary information about the aldermanic pages (number of followers, typical speed of engagement, banner message). Using these posts as a database, we also performed a Structural Topic Model content analysis, which allowed us to detect common themes across this large amount of text information. The analysis yielded 40 distinct, coherent topics, which

will play a role in the subsequent analyses; details and diagnostic information on this procedure are in [Appendix Content].

We analyze Facebook data because it is by far the most widely-used social media platforms for Americans today. More than two-thirds of American adults use Facebook, including majorities in every major demographic group except those over 65—and even in this relatively analog generation, 41 percent of people were users. This is far more than any other social media platform, indicating that it is the site that is most likely to reflect the demos.4 Aldermen were also more likely to have a Facebook presence than other social media, though most have multiple avenues for Internet-based contact with constitutents. Facebook’s API was congenial for data gathering purposes, which also helped the analysis. We combine this Facebook data with information about the personal and political characteristics of city council members, and demographic and political population characteristics of Chicago’s 50 wards. These background data are drawn from a database of Chicago politics developed by the authors as part of the Chicago Democracy Project (CDP).5

In these analyses, we intentionally begin the window after the most recent election because we are more interested in “routine” use of these platforms for political communication with constituents, not as an electioneering tool. And we stick to the public sites both by practical necessity and because we are interested in the quality of these spaces as public forums. Analysis 1: Who Posts? And What is the Response? Figure [PostsMap] shows the geographic distribution of facebook use by aldermen in Chicago to give a picture of who is engaging in this form of communication. In the map, each ward is shaded a darker blue based on the number of posts made by its alderman since 2015. Total posts range from zero (these members do not have public accounts) in the white-shaded areas to over a thousand in the dark-blue shaded areas. There are two main clusters on the map, along the northern edge of the city, and a wedge on the largely Latino Southwest side. We are not surprised by the former, which likely reflects high local education and home ownership rates. These two characteristics associated with more participation in local politics, so aldermen may find this platform a convenient and efficient way to connect with constituents. The immigrant-dense Southwest side is a particularly politically active area of the city given its demography, and we see exploring this online presence by political leaders as an area for future investigation.

4 Smith and Anderson (2018). http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/03/01/social-media-use-in-2018/ 5 More details on that project and data collection are available at cdp.northwestern.edu.

Figure [PostsMap]: Total Facebook posts by ward/alderman in Chicago, Spring 2015-March 2018. Darker shades indicate higher numbers of posts.

Because social media is a young person’s game, we hypothesized that younger aldermen would be more active on this platform. Chicago’s city council has members ranging in age from a recently elected 29 year-old to a 74-year old first elected in the Johnson administration. Figure [PostsYOB], which plots total posts against the alderman’s year of birth, suggests that this may indeed be the case. The local fit line rises continuously with youth, though the relationship is quite noisy. When we control for the member’s race (black aldermen use Facebook far less often, and are all below the (dashed, black) local fit line in Figure [PostsYob]), a year of age is associated with about 14 fewer total posts in the 2015-2018 window.6 Among African American aldermen and non-black aldermen, the relationship between age and activity is almost identical, as indicated by the red and blue linear fit lines (for black and non-black aldermen, respectively). These observations provide support for the Old Dogs, New Tricks Hypothesis, though we are a little surprised at how noisy the relationship is, given the rapidity of social media adoption by younger people generally. Cross-platform analyses might reveal stronger relationships on this front.

6 See Table [RegYOB] in Appendix.

[Figure PostsYOB]: Total Facebook Posts (2015-2018) by Alderman Year of Birth. The black lowess fit line is for all members. The blue and red linear fit lines are for non-black and black members, respectively.

If youth is only weakly related to social media use, what about time in office? Politicians

who achieved their position before the rise of social media may be less likely to adapt their strategy to new tools; those who entered this position more recently may more naturally adopt the latest technologies, and longer incumbency may also insulate officials who will decline to adopt new ideas. In a bivariate sense, recent arrivals seem to be the heaviest adopters of social media. Table [ArrivePosts] shows the average total posts for members whose first term on the city council were at different moments: first time winners in 2015, first time successfully re-elected, and so on. Those who arrived before 2015, whether they’ve been there for 7 years or 50, posted on average about 400 posts during our time window. Those who arrived in 2015 or later, however, posted on average nearly twice as many times.

Took Office Mean Posts

Before 1995 496 1996-2004 356 2005-2014 406 Since 2015 746

However, we are cautious in the above observations, because these relationships are noisy and with only 45 city council members on Facebook, many more idiosyncratic factors may certainly me important. Overall activity does indeed seem to be related to member age and insecurity of position. Using OLS regression to account for potential alternative political and demographic predictors, we tentatively estimate that on average each year of age leads to about 20 fewer total posts. The relationship between tenure in office and activity seems more complicated upon examination. Those who have been in office longer may not post much more, but those who had close recent elections do—we would expect an alderman who ran unopposed in 2015

to have post about 650 fewer times than one who won narrowly. Again, this is an area for further investigation, but it suggests that using social media may be a function of political learning and the ever-evolving tools with which to compete for office. Who Gets the Likes? As a final exploratory figure, Figure [PageLikesPosts] shows members’ Facebook page followers against the number of total posts. This is a use-it or lose-it story. There is a strong relationship between activity and followers: the more active the alderman is, the more people engage.

Figure [PageLikesPosts]: Total likes of council members’ facebook pages, by number of posts from 2015-2018. At left, all members. At right, without outlier Pawar. Each post is associated with about 2 additional page likes.

Note the two outliers, however. The figure at left includes Ameya Pawar, a Northsider who briefly ran for governor and ostensibly gained a lot of fans from that brief foray. He has many more followers than any other council member. The figure at right drops Pawar, allowing us to see the relationship among the rest of the council members. One mini-outlier stands out: Roberto Maldonado from the 26th ward has many more followers than one would expect based on his activity level. On average, each additional post is associated with just under 2 additional page likes or follows.7

These basic descriptive analyses can give an idea of the character of these officials’ online activity, which might give one pause before we over-interpret the possible import of these pages as a forum for democracy: with a constituency of about 50,000, most aldermen have about 3,500 followers, and most are posting fewer than 10 times per month. Most of these posts are decidedly not of the clickbait variety (or at least not the successful clickbait variety): the median post gets about 5 likes, 1 share, and zero comments.

7 See Appendix Table [PageLikesPost] and [FollowPost] for OLS results.

What Do They Post About? In this section, we turn to a content analysis of the posts made by Chicago aldermen from 2015-2018. Using a structural topic model, we identified 40 coherent themes of posts.8 We gave labels to these topics by analyzing the highest probability and frequency words that were characteristic of each topic. For each post, the STM analysis yields a gamma score for each topic that describes the extent to which the post fits within the topic. The gamma scores range from 0 to 1 and for each post the sum of gamma scores is 1. The topics and their keywords, along with the percent of posts for which each topic is the best “fit” (i.e., has a higher gamma score than any other topic) are presented in Figure [TopicPcts].

Figure [TopicPcts]: The percent of posts that fit best with each topic.

As one can see, the most common topics in these posts are fairly mundane announcements like Event Information, Newsletters, Meeting Information, and Opening Hours. Together, these four topics make up about 1 in 4 aldermanic posts. Some of these topics seem fairly similar; subsequent analyses will explore possible geographic or community-based reasons why they generate distinct topics in the content model. Turning to an examination of the contrast between different kinds of aldermen, we can examine different blocs to see if they differ in the kinds of things they post about. There are two particularly distinctive groups in the council: the Progressive Caucus and the so-called “Rubber Stamp” caucus. The first is a group of aldermen who characterize themselves as an ideologically motivated quasi-opposition bloc. They describe themselves as “dedicated to creating a more just and equal Chicago, combating all forms of

8 Using the STM package in R developed by Roberts et al (2018), we performed the STM analysis using months and alderman identifiers as covariates. 40 emerged as the optimal number of topics after iteratively setting the model to different numbers of topics and analyzing the residuals and semantic coherence of the results.

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discrimination, and advancing public policies that offer genuine opportunity to all Chicagoans, especially those who have been left out of our society’s prosperity.” This is a good description of policy-motivated political action. At the other end of the continuum, there are several aldermen who rarely if ever cast a dissenting vote (to be sure, most members rarely cast a a vote against the floor leader’s agenda, and the vast majority of votes in the city council get at least 90% support). For the sake of this analysis, we include the remaining members of the “Rubber Stamp” caucus identified by Simpson et al (2014), who never voted against the mayor’s agenda in that year. These aldermen are not looking to make any waves. Figure [CaucusHist] shows the distribution of post topics for each of those two groups. It’s difficult to tell the differences because the topic numbers are not substantive and the mundane newsletter topics are most common for both groups, but the key differences are in the shape of the distributions: the Progressive Caucus’s posts are on a broader range of topics, and they are more than twice as likely as the Rubber Stampers to post on potentially state and national issues or to endorse other candidates. Each of those topics are wave-making positions that can generate enemies and controversy as easily as win allies.

Post Topics for Different Blocs of Aldermen

Fig [CaucusHist]: Topic distributions for Progressive Caucus and “Rubber Stamp” Aldermen

Candidate ambition is a slightly different dimension of this attitude toward wave-making. Aldermen seeking higher office must also seek attention and take positions on issues beyond their ward; they cannot simply go along. There were two such aldermen in Chicago during the time we examined: Ameya Pawar, who became a candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor; and Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, who was briefly a candidate for Lieutenant Governor (on a different ticket). If such ambition is related to supralocal position-taking, then posts by these aldermen should be more likely to score highly on the State and Local Politics topic (topic 7). Figure [Topic7Reg] indicates that this is true. This figure depicts the coefficents of an OLS regression of posts’ Topic 7 gamma scores on aldermanic indicators and month. Only two Alderman have significant coefficients: Pawar and Ramirez-Rosa.

Predictors of State and National Topic Content

Figure [Topic7Reg]: OLS coefficients of a regression of State and National Politics gamma scores on aldermanic indicators. Horizontal bars indicate 90 percent confidence intervals; Pawar also significant at 95 percent (but not Ramirez-Rosa). Month indicators included in the model but not shown.

For the rest of the paper, we will examine the dynamics of Topic 7 (“State and National Politics”), which presents a political substance that pits the controversy-stirring incentives of the Internet against the constituency-serving paradigm of traditional local politics. Nationalization and Controversy Finally, we use the preceding text analysis to address the core question of the Nationalization/Twitterbeef Hypothesis, according to which nationalized issues will draw more attention and engagement on social media than more locally-focused topics. Using the universe of posts by these aldermen, we will look particularly closely at the topic “State and National Politics” that arose from the STM content analysis (Topic 7 in the figures above).9 Because each post record includes measures of engagement (Likes, Shares, Comments), we can see which topics, on average, receive the most engagement from the public. Over the past three years (the time period in which we collected the data), there certainly have been some compelling

9 The distinctive words associated with Topic 7 in the STM were “"hate, rauner, donald, governor, right, immigr, trump, deport, rhetor, wage, wealthi, worker, billionair, trump’, bruce"

national political issues on which one might take a “wave-making” symbolic stand, one way or the other. It’s not clear that national politics have gotten more salient, relative to local issues, during that time period, but it’s certainly plausible.

In Chicago, at least, this does seem to be the case. One way we can see this is by analysis of the State and National Politics topic in these posts. How often did aldermen make comments that related to this topic? Figure [Topic7Month] shows the frequency of posts for which Topic 7 was the best fit.10 We can see at a glance that there is a sharp discontinuity in January 2017, supralocal issues became more common. Before then, the average month had fewer that ten posts on supralocal affairs; for 2017, the average was about 50. There has been a decrease in the past 5 months, though the new baseline seems to be higher than before 2017.

Figure [Topic7Month]: Number of State and National Politics Posts by Month

How did members of the public respond to these posts? Local officials do not, after all, have many powers in supralocal affairs, so it’s plausible that their statements on such topics may not draw much engagement. It certainly seems possible that the opposite is true, however—that comments in this area will attract more attention and engagement. Figure [RegTopic7] shows this latter expectation to be the case. The figure depicts partial results of a post-level regression of public social media engagement (measured as “likes” of a post) on topical content. The points and bars in the plot are OLS coefficients and confidence intervals for the posts’ gamma scores on each topic (which range from 0 to 1). The estimated model also included indicators for month and alderman, to zero in more precisely on the effect of making a statement on a given topic. The interpretation of the coefficients is that a post with a gamma score of 1 on a given topic (meaning it was really about that topic) would be associated with an expected marginal number of likes equal to the coefficient.

10 By “best fit” for a given post, we mean that the STM gamma value for Topic 7 was higher than that for all other Topics, which is interpreted as meaning that the post was more “on that topic” than on any other.

The key point in this figure is the coefficient on Topic 7: it is by far the biggest engagement booster. While we have little confidence that most of the topics do much at all to increase engagement, a post that scores highly on Topic 7 would indeed be expected to get many more likes; far more than a post on any other topic. No post actually has a Topic 7 gamma score of 1, but the average post that was more on Topic 7 than any other got 142 likes, nearly 7 times as many as the average post (which had 22). Based on similar regressions, we would also expect Topic 7 posts also received ceteris paribus, more comments and post shares than posts on any other topic.

Figure [RegTopics]: OLS regression of Facebook likes per post on STM Topics. Coefficients depicted as points. Topic variables are gamma scores; Topic 40 is an excluded category to avoid multicollinearity. Indicators for

Month and Council Member included in regression but not shown here. Bars are 90- (thick bars) and 95-percent (thin bars) confidence intervals. N=25,370, R2=.22

But what, exactly, does this engagement really look like? In the world of social media, likes, page shares, and comments are sometimes interpreted as winning outcomes in and of themselves—going viral is the goal, as much as garnering real support or advancing an argument. When we look more closely at particular posts, however, the story may become more complicated. And to return to Marzullo’s insight, going viral may be orthogonal to the professional politician’s principal goal of maintenance of office and participation within an organization. To qualitatively examine this question, we briefly turn to the two posts that got

the most likes (and comments, and shares) of any posts in the dataset. The first is a post made in November of 2015 by Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, a young first-term alderman from the Northwest side, who posted an image of a letter he had written to President Obama in response to an earlier statement made by Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner, that Illinois “would not welcome Syrian refugees.”11 Rosa stated in his post that

“Governor Rauner lacks the legal and moral authority to close Illinois' doors to people seeking safety. That's why today I wrote to the President and U.S. immigration authorities to let them know we welcome refugee families fleeing violence here in our 35th Ward. In the face of hatred and fear, our community chooses love.”

It’s almost certainly true that if Governor Rauner “lacks the legal authority” to regulate immigration, so does a city alderman, so this fits well within a wave-making statement designed to take a position on a controversial issue—the opposite of what Marzullo would suggest. The post garnered 4,465 likes, 1749 shares, and 310 comments. The post pre-dated the addition of different valence “likes” on Facebook’s interface, but a perusal of the comments indicates that not all engagement with the post reflected agreement. Some posters said “Thank you” or made general statements in accord with the posts’ sentiment, and others made a direct electoral connection, stating for example “This is why I voted for you.”

Unsurprisingly, however, the overall tenor of the comment conversation is quite different. Several posters were explicitly xenophobic; even nudging those aside, several declared that this divisive issue alienated them from Rosa as an alderman and future candidate. For example, one poster wrote “You just got a vote for the other guy. Your days in office are numbered.” Another said “You're not voting on behalf of your award [sic] by writing this letter Carlos. Pretty sad that you sent it giving your residents less than 8 business hours to speak out against such reckless behavior. It's moves like this that will make you another crony standing next to Rahm.” Another said “Rosa you [expletive deleted]…you speak for 55,000 people huh? Idiot. Let's see how that next election goes for you...” Another simply stated “Vote Rosa out !!”

The comments do not appear to break down entirely along racial lines; although we cannot easily observe the ethnoracial identities of the commenters (or whether they are residents of the 35th Ward), some dissenters certainly appear to have Spanish surnames, and when we click through to observe their pages most appear to be from Chicago at least. Taking this step in 2015 was certainly a wave-making position by Rosa, even if it might not have been too far out of step with a ward that is nearly 70 percent Latino and overwhelmingly Democratic (the 35th ward supported Hillary Clinton with 86 percent of the vote in 2016). Ramirez-Rosa is an outspoken ideological politician; while Chicago is an overwhelmingly Democratic city, he has appeared on the cover of a magazine declaring an affiliation with the Democratic Socialists of America. Such ideological positions can bring both beneficial and negative attention all at the same time, however. His position-taking almost certainly led to him being briefly named as a

11 Quoting Ramirez-Rosa, which is paraphrasing Rauner. Ramirez-Rosa post at https://www.facebook.com/35thward/photos/a.1694024970820365.1073741829.1690169684539227/1744658119090383/?type=3&theater

candidate for Lieutenant Governor on a Democratic gubernatorial primary ticket last year, but his position on the decidedly supralocal Israeli-Palestinian conflict also cost him that same position.12

As is often the case in comment sections, the comments sited here are surely reflect an intensity of feeling that does not reflect the average person. Still, making public statements, easily accessible to the public wherever they are, entails significant risk (as well as significant potential upside) for a local official. For a contrast, we can examine another kind of highly-engaged post: those that received at least 100 shares, and which had MORE shares than likes. Rather than being ideological statements, these posts tend to be announcements, which can spread through social networks quickly for those who might benefit from the information. The most-engaged instances of posts like these were a series of pictures made by an alderman about a new carnival in her ward, and a post by another alderman announcing a hiring push by the Chicago Housing Authority. Another advised residents that “strange candy” had been left on porches on a summer evening. Posts like these are far more common than ideological positions; though they do not gain as much attention, they certainly provide a promising mode of communication between constituents and officials. Discussion and Next steps The foregoing analyses suggest that there is indeed a tension between traditional understandings of low-profile local politics and the contemporary medium of social media. While local politicians have long been counseled to stick to local issues and constituent service, the ease of entry into supralocal conversations, the incentives for raising one’s profile (or just the psychological “ping!” one gets from having someone virtually smile at something you said) may provide cross-cutting tensions: the nuts and bolts of governance and constituent information-sharing tend to get far less attention than statements about supralocal issues. Such issues may be closer to constituents’ passions, but they are also more controversial—and farther from local officials’ actual portfolios of responsibility. They may therefor provide a two-edged sword: Pawar and Rosa are the two aldermen who sought supralocal office during the time of our data collection, and they also tend to make more supralocal statements. Neither was particularly successful in their foray, and may have generated waves that will undermine their foundations for re-election in 2019. More broadly, the use of social media by younger and more recently arrived (and potentially more vulnerable) candidates reflects the ever-evolving game of politics, in which adaptive use of new tools may upend older techniques of communicating with constituents. As we have seen in higher-level elections, these approaches entail quick changes and more than a little controversy when used in election. When used for day-to-day government, as in our analysis, they tend to be less controversial and engender much less overall engagement.

This analysis is part of a broader analysis of place-based social media engagement across different social contexts in Chicago. In the next phase, we will examine the character of neighborhood-based social media groups developed for various purposes to connect residents to each other, to get a glimpse of how American urbanites engage with each other where cyberspace hits the physical world.

12 Pearson (2017)

Appendix: Regression Results Tables Table [RegYOB]: Reg of T_posts on Alderman age, political factors, and district demographic characteristics. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

t_post | Coef. Std. Err. t P>|t| [95% Conf. Interval]

---------------+----------------------------------------------------------------

AldermanYOB | 18.85524 10.09617 1.87 0.070 -1.601538 39.31203

TookOffice4b | -43.71392 93.92625 -0.47 0.644 -234.0266 146.5988

ProgCaucus2016 | -117.9472 188.6012 -0.63 0.536 -500.0894 264.1951

Margin victory | -650.0316 273.1443 -2.38 0.023 -1203.474 -96.58866

aldblack | -627.0319 413.7983 -1.52 0.138 -1465.467 211.4031

Wnhwhtp | -753.5321 1541.801 -0.49 0.628 -3877.517 2370.452

Wafamtp | -542.2791 1345.066 -0.40 0.689 -3267.642 2183.084

Whisptp | -491.3511 1248.084 -0.39 0.696 -3020.209 2037.506

Wbachtp | -1585.48 2790.188 -0.57 0.573 -7238.938 4067.979

Wpovtp | -319.0884 544.238 -0.59 0.561 -1421.819 783.6427

Wownertp | -803.9977 865.263 -0.93 0.359 -2557.187 949.1918

Wmedrent | .7082615 1.132134 0.63 0.535 -1.58566 3.002183

_cons | -34911.08 19713.47 -1.77 0.085 -74854.35 5032.198

Table [PageLikesPosts]: OLS Regression of Page Likes on activity and district characteristics . reg aldfblike t_post Wnhwhtp Wafamtp Whisptp Wbachtp Wpovtp Wownertp Wmedrent if last!="Pawar"

Source | SS df MS Number of obs = 42

-------------+---------------------------------- F(8, 33) = 4.92

Model | 81193151.7 8 10149144 Prob > F = 0.0005

Residual | 68007774.6 33 2060841.65 R-squared = 0.5442

-------------+---------------------------------- Adj R-squared = 0.4337

Total | 149200926 41 3639046.98 Root MSE = 1435.6

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

aldfblike | Coef. Std. Err. t P>|t| [95% Conf. Interval]

-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------

t_post | 1.82443 .4727459 3.86 0.001 .8626214 2.786239

Wnhwhtp | 11558.93 4550.307 2.54 0.016 2301.261 20816.6

Wafamtp | 6947.048 3609.219 1.92 0.063 -395.9628 14290.06

Whisptp | 7694.94 3716.435 2.07 0.046 133.7968 15256.08

Wbachtp | 779.7235 8383.491 0.09 0.926 -16276.62 17836.06

Wpovtp | 249.5145 1742.319 0.14 0.887 -3295.26 3794.289

Wownertp | -3939.67 2604.135 -1.51 0.140 -9237.822 1358.482

Wmedrent | -9.359215 3.601684 -2.60 0.014 -16.6869 -2.031535

_cons | -1519.203 3989.829 -0.38 0.706 -9636.57 6598.165

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Table [PageFollowsPosts]: OLS Regression of Page Follows on activity and district characteristics

. reg aldermanfbfollow t_post Wnhwhtp Wafamtp Whisptp Wbachtp Wpovtp Wownertp Wmedrent if

last!="Pawar"

Source | SS df MS Number of obs = 42

-------------+---------------------------------- F(8, 33) = 5.05

Model | 88510051.5 8 11063756.4 Prob > F = 0.0004

Residual | 72324176.1 33 2191641.7 R-squared = 0.5503

-------------+---------------------------------- Adj R-squared = 0.4413

Total | 160834228 41 3922786.04 Root MSE = 1480.4

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

aldermanfb~w | Coef. Std. Err. t P>|t| [95% Conf. Interval]

-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------

t_post | 1.931335 .4875175 3.96 0.000 .9394733 2.923197

Wnhwhtp | 11411.84 4692.488 2.43 0.021 1864.901 20958.78

Wafamtp | 7071.334 3721.994 1.90 0.066 -501.1195 14643.79

Whisptp | 7785.466 3832.56 2.03 0.050 -11.93606 15582.87

Wbachtp | 1144.579 8645.445 0.13 0.895 -16444.71 18733.87

Wpovtp | -244.9783 1796.76 -0.14 0.892 -3900.514 3410.557

Wownertp | -4701.673 2685.505 -1.75 0.089 -10165.37 762.0268

Wmedrent | -9.444497 3.714223 -2.54 0.016 -17.00114 -1.887853

_cons | -597.2329 4114.497 -0.15 0.885 -8968.239 7773.774

Appendix: STM topics Description

TopicTopic

Key Words

Posts

%

1: Sports, Parades, and Festivals

parad, athlet, olymp, sox, footbal, mayo, tumbler, softbal, lincolntow, cinco, soccer, cub, team, plung, game, pride, blackhawk, ballpark, plai, tournament, heritag, hawk, wriglei, flythew, guatemalan

423 1.67

2: Donation drives pantri, toi, coat, holidai, reusabl, thanksgiv, donat, clau, gentli, santa, drop, christma, unwrap, checkout, decemb, turkei, jewelosco, helpahero, gift, distribut, ban, dec, box, toiletri, groceri

682 2.69

3: (12th ward specific) cardena, resolut, mckinlei, georg, brighton, villita, surplu, tif, alderman, state, yearinreview, homeless, villag, wardon, advisori, latino, pac, persh, confer, tbt, kelli, archer, own, expand, mpac

583 2.3

4: Disasters and disaster relief

puerto, steinmetz, rican, hurrican, rico, casa, jone, choir, mather, nort, casual, summerd, song, thwardstrong, prep, perform, puertorriqueÒa, danc, pr, humboldt, evacue, bessem, kenwood, sing, earthquak

266 1.05

5: Pets and animal control

anim, cat, rescu, cacc, microchip, paw, bark, leash, dog, bbq, nokillchicago, pet, anticruelti, kitten, photo, corner, fido, adopt, car, smell, crosswalk, rat, flint, blast, danger

485 1.91

6: Police and Firefighters

firefight, lodg, command, fire, fratern, district, cpd, depart, polic, chicago, johnson, escamilla, foundationoffici, superintend, navarro, cfd, respond, cider, eddi, rink, paramed, loonei, ambul, rebuild, deputi

420 1.66

7: State and national politics

hate, rauner, donald, governor, right, immigr, trump, deport, rhetor, wage, wealthi, worker, billionair, trumpí, bruce, cairo, refuge, daca, defend, undocu, frack, poverti, equal, tyron, gov

869 3.42

8: Garbage and sanitation

wast, plow, tree, debri, dss, sanit, garbag, recycl, collect, cart, refus, drain, pickup, sweep, forestri, citycollect, storm, yard, rodent, bin, leaf, pick, trim, privateservic, blue

605 2.38

9: Roof and porch repairs

porch, regist, registr, roof, save, tutor, ehap, date, id, onetim, lotteri, child, citizenship, gallistel, licens, code, camp, proof, slot, emerg, repair, onlin, english, heat, driverí

375 1.48

10: Transportation sticker, expir, buse, ventra, cta, bu, june, line, station, barrel, rail, clerk, permit, vehicl, purchas, sale, brown, transit, residenti, red, pass, orang, addison, fare, travel

571 2.25

11: Clean-up events beautifi, clean, volunt, spring, april, plant, green, earth, air, keep, cleanup, pollut, lot, neighbor, labor, lend, troubl, tool, hibern, flower, gonzalez, orlando, luci, harmoni, parson

476 1.88

12: Misc senn, andersonvil, breast, armori, thorndal, peirc, thwardsumm, winthrop, buttercup, edgewat, breastcanc, uptown, broadwai,

858 3.38

cancer, garden, theatr, swift, osterman, peek, marsh, bryn, josi, mawr, argyl, mccutcheon

13: Campaigns and endorsements

fly, runwai, glad, democrat, im, carlo, ramirezrosa, quiet, heard, petit, endors, progress, tune, committeeman, nois, humbl, candid, stand, live, speak, radio, rotat, campaign, movement, offici

380 1.5

14: Reminders dont, forget, miss, time, wait, spot, run, morn, bell, stop, watch, daylight, what, tabl, seat, northcent, donut, wont, reserv, townhal, peopl, paidsickdai, hegewisch, baltimor, doesnt

242 0.95

15: Veteran tributes brookin, bless, happi, memori, wonder, honor, capuano, flag, father, sacrific, condol, birthdai, freedom, love, prayer, hero, mother, stward, luther, rememb, bauer, merri, brave, martin, veteran

1,056 4.16

16: (15th ward specific) chi, bettertogeth, goodinenglewood, bync, garza, michel, foulk, familiesfirst, backoftheyard, sadlowski, chipolic, brightonpark, ald, mitt, puttingfamiliesfirst, lopez, hugo, westenglewood, alderwoman, englewood, roderick, violenc, hedg, harper, thompson

631 2.49

17: Notable figures gettingitdonein, milli, guzzardi, burnett, mcauliff, mulro, reboyra, silvestri, edgebrook, norwood, senat, debra, chri, napolitano, eatdrinkshoploc, ariel, santiago, gilbert, communityfirstin, edison, taliaferro, cheesecak, martwick, silverstein, laurino

654 2.58

18: Property taxes appeal, seminar, township, workshop, assess, taxat, tax, assessor, carton, unclaim, overvalu, cabonargi, valuat, properti, exempt, tin, counti, cook, file, bungalow, index, landlord, contain, treasur, unfair

470 1.85

19: Schools teacher, schurz, growcommun, amundsen, carl, grader, neighborhoodk, school, calmeca, student, prek, cp, elementari, classroom, parent, princip, ebing, academi, h, pruss, educ, clement, sullivan, graduat, reinberg

897 3.53

20: Filming notices film, st, leavitt, parkingtow, pd, televis, ukrainian, intermitt, loui, kostner, ainsli, lasal, taylor, augusta, cooper, east, ashland, post, scene, heed, island, restrict, racin, stoni, keeler

302 1.19

21: Street repairs survei, share, light, sidewalk, pothol, request, basi, cost, streetlight, snow, shovel, feedback, firstcom, firstserv, total, pole, respons, graffiti, remov, allei, popular, enhanc, upgrad, smart, ic

290 1.14

22: Taxes and utilities come, energi, util, domest, credit, scam, hotlin, consum, phone, claim, legal, electr, bank, payment, bacp, itin, meter, financi, buyer, incom, uber, pai, liheap, bill, outag

370 1.46

23: Job opportunities employ, recruit, requisit, hire, job, opportun, tollwai, interview, career, trade, workforc, oliveharvei, posit, internship, salari, postingoct, train, apprenticeship, fair, seeker, bedford, hr, skill, addam, wright

829 3.27

24: Crime offend, incid, robberi, suspici, male, burglari, anonym, crime, victim, detect, alert, arrest, garag, deter, loiter, fled, descript, vigil, immedi, bureau, gang, camera, aggrav, unknown, occur

768 3.03

25: Rebates and grants rebat, applic, appli, deadlin, grant, elig, sbif, accept, qualifi, scholarship, homeown, debt, exam, submit, extend, program, period, rfp, download, document, jack, freez, relief, enrol, offset

441 1.74

26: Misc announcements

librari, palapa, thwardorg, instagram, independ, page, constitu, yourvoiceourcommit, rambler, send, aldermangilbertvillega, youd, twitter, facebook, fb, men, ncaa, disnei, coupl, sicktimechicago, brainerd, media, branch, thankyou, follow

190 0.75

27: Elections and participatory budgeting

budget, participatori, pb, ballot, voter, poll, vote, spend, assembli, decid, idea, elect, cast, precinct, million, ap, cycl, dollar, nov, improv, spent, mosa, infrastructur, democraci, wardí

668 2.63

28: Trails and parks trail, cyclist, bicycl, egger, shore, grand, lincolnsquar, river, ravenswood, grove, lake, mayfair, preserv, lakefront, ribbon, south, north, michigan, forest, cut, ridg, natur, metra, streetervil, cottag

379 1.49

29: Meeting information

tonight, meet, town, attend, beat, hall, cap, tac, hermosa, night, invit, forum, logan, discuss, panel, roll, commun, mauric, associ, nwshc, rsvp, hous, solut, held, avondal

1,409 5.55

30: Opening hours tomorrow, pm, mondai, march, pulaski, reopen, ampm, februari, thursdai, tuesdai, close, lawrenc, remind, diversei, fridai, irv, mon, observ, cancel, novemb, wednesdai, locat, av, armitag, kelvyn

1,360 5.36

31: (25th ward specific) thward, eatloc, shoploc, westloop, chinatown, sick, book, pilsen, gui, articl, talk, chiu, didnt, convers, read, fyi, reason, stori, hei, earnedsicktim, oconnor, vision, reader, bad, ameya

390 1.54

32: Zoning and development

develop, plan, propos, afford, corridor, build, econom, redevelop, vacant, apart, land, comment, facil, pmd, approv, input, cha, commiss, revenu, industri, revit, floor, written, zone, built

611 2.41

33: Art and museums mosquito, artwork, sculptur, herbicid, museum, art, artist, peggi, calumet, mural, exhibit, sprai, corp, notebaert, histori, shedd, map, viru, piec, redistrict, paschk, nile, dcase, creativ, cultur

444 1.75

34: Infrastructure projects

main, bridg, water, asphalt, traffic, westbound, intersect, lane, closur, patienc, restor, flush, detour, sewer, shut, concret, dwm, mill, expect, construct, instal, tunnel, resurfac, cdot, western

956 3.77

35: Event information halloween, fest, eclips, shred, farmer, fun, festiv, toddler, enjoi, movi, viator, shredathon, entertain, carniv, market, picnic, august, craft, poni, sundai, hunt, dougla, band, trickortr, costum

1,779 7.01

36: Health and Emergencies

flu, cardenass, bingo, senior, medic, health, clinic, dfss, center, shot, free, alarm, warm, disabl, resourc, elder, cool, heater, coverag, mental, elderli, wellb, fair, hiv, dental

756 2.98

37: Competition congratulations

youth, summer, congratul, award, teen, fantast, class, lunch, boi, success, mikva, winner, mentor, who, pilat, girl, challeng, competit, intern, bright, chef, excel, awesom, culinari, inaugur

383 1.51

38: Newsletters newslett, ward, new, weekli, enewslett, week, eventsthegreatth, aldermansawy, fourth, email, updat, upcom, southchicago, staff, check, wardchicago, mitchel, click, calumetheight, southdeer, southshor, link, sign, thegreatth, event

1,482 5.84

39: (49th ward specific) mors, glenwood, jarvi, pub, wine, ethiopian, den, mayn, badou, thai, poitin, sheridan, stil, oasi, senegales, cuisin, grape, devon, spice, keg, greenleaf, burrito, loco, pulpo, chicken

204 0.8

40: City hall emanuel, mayor, laquan, aldermen, rahm, oversight, ordin, mcdonald, caucu, reform, introduc, measur, inspector, account, task, pension, patton, ethic, enforc, releas, forc, council, municip, mccarthi, colleagu

421 1.66

References

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