Social media and political voices of organized interest groups: A descriptive analysis

This study provides a descriptive look at the use of social media (e.g., Facebook and Twitter) and inequality of political voices in the context of political interest organizations. It seeks to answer the question of whether the Internet and social media allow those who were previously outside the mainstream of power with respect to the broader democratic discourse to raise their voices and be heard. Overall, we find that social media does not diminish the concentration of political voices within the democratic discourse. Rather, the evidence suggests that political voice is more concentrated when the voice is measured by the size of the online network using social media than when measured by traditional variables such as the number of lobbyists. We also report that a very small number of large organizations that have very large-sized online networks as measured by Twitter followers are driving the high concentration of online political voices.