2022.04.27共和党参议员获得近16万名推特粉丝

shiyi18

Search
My account
Graphic detail
Daily chart
Republican senators gained almost 160,000 Twitter followers after Elon Musk’s deal
News of the takeover could be shifting the platform’s demographics
Apr 27th 2022
Give this article

Within hours of the news that Elon Musk, a serial entrepreneur, would add Twitter to his collection, users noticed a peculiar trend: left-leaning accounts were bleeding followers, while right-wing users enjoyed a boom. The Economist studied the pattern by charting the number of followers that America’s members of Congress had on Twitter before and after the deal was announced on April 25th. The results are subtle, yet highly consistent. The average number of followers for all Senate Democrats dropped by around 0.2% between April 25th and April 26th. Accounts linked to Republicans, however, increased by 0.8%. The same was true for the House of Representatives, with Democrats losing and Republicans gaining followers.


Vice-President Kamala Harris lost the greatest number of followers, dropping 22,000 in one day. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, two progressive senators, shed more than 19,000 and 14,000 followers, respectively. On average, Democratic senators lost 2,700 followers each. A significant drop in Twitter followers across various accounts usually indicates an operation to clean up “bots”—automated accounts controlled by software. But that the vast majority of Republican senators and representatives actually gained significant numbers of followers suggests that was not the case. Twitter said the fluctuations appear to be driven by account creations and deactivations, according to NBC News.


Republican senators gained an average of 3,400 each after the announcement. Rand Paul, a Kentucky senator, often described as a conservative libertarian, added 66,000 followers to his account. Other prominent Republicans in the Senate and House also experienced significant gains. Jim Jordan, a congressman from Ohio and stalwart supporter of Donald Trump, added 51,000. Ted Cruz, a senator from Texas, saw his following grow by more than 40,000. Even after these Republican gains and Democrat losses, however, the platform still skews left—Democratic members of Congress tend to have more followers than Republicans.

If completed, Mr Musk’s $44bn deal will make him the sole owner of Twitter. Some fear his approach to free speech will undo Twitter’s attempts to rid its site of misinformation. Leftist users had threatened to quit the platform if Mr Musk took charge. These data suggest they were not bluffing. Conversely, Mr Musk’s promise to make the social network a haven for free speech may appeal to a certain brand of libertarian Republican. Mr Musk’s Twitter might end up looking different from what its users had become used to. ■





每日图表
共和党参议员在埃隆-马斯克的交易后获得近16万名推特粉丝
收购的消息可能正在改变该平台的人口统计学。
2022年4月27日


在连续创业者埃隆-马斯克(Elon Musk)将把推特加入自己的收藏品的消息传出后的几个小时内，用户注意到一个奇特的趋势：左翼账户的粉丝在不断流失，而右翼用户则享受着繁荣。经济学人》通过绘制美国国会议员在4月25日宣布交易前后在推特上拥有的粉丝数量来研究这一模式。结果是微妙的，但高度一致。在4月25日和4月26日之间，所有参议院民主党人的平均追随者数量下降了约0.2%。然而，与共和党人有关的账户却增加了0.8%。众议院的情况也是如此，民主党人失去了粉丝，而共和党人获得了粉丝。


副总统卡马拉-哈里斯(Kamala Harris)失去的追随者数量最多，一天之内就减少了22,000人。伯尼-桑德斯和伊丽莎白-沃伦，两位进步的参议员，分别减少了超过19,000和14,000名追随者。平均而言，民主党参议员每人减少了2700名追随者。各种账户的推特粉丝大幅减少，通常表明有一个清理 "机器人 "的行动--由软件控制的自动账户。但是，绝大多数共和党参议员和众议员实际上获得了大量的追随者，这表明情况并非如此。据NBC新闻报道，推特表示，这种波动似乎是由账户的创建和停用引起的。


共和党参议员在宣布后平均每人增加了3400人。肯塔基州参议员兰德-保罗（Rand Paul）经常被描述为保守的自由主义者，他的账户增加了66,000名追随者。参议院和众议院的其他知名共和党人也经历了大幅增长。来自俄亥俄州的国会议员、唐纳德-特朗普的坚定支持者吉姆-乔丹(Jim Jordan)增加了5.1万人。来自德克萨斯州的参议员特德-克鲁兹(Ted Cruz)的粉丝增加了4万多人。然而，即使在这些共和党人的收益和民主党人的损失之后，该平台仍然偏向于左翼--民主党国会议员的追随者往往多于共和党人。

如果完成，马斯克先生440亿美元的交易将使他成为Twitter的唯一所有者。一些人担心，他对言论自由的态度将使推特摆脱错误信息的尝试功亏一篑。左派用户曾威胁说，如果马斯克先生掌权，他们将退出该平台。这些数据表明，他们并不是在虚张声势。相反，马斯克先生承诺让社交网络成为言论自由的天堂，这可能会吸引某类自由主义的共和党人。马斯克先生的Twitter最终可能会与用户所习惯的样子不同。■