Who Leads in the Shadows? ERGM and Centrality Analysis of Congressional Democrats on Bluesky
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arXiv
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| Autores principales: | , |
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| Formato: | Preprint |
| Publicado: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866912497850646528 |
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| author | Hew, Gordon McCulloh, Ian |
| author_facet | Hew, Gordon McCulloh, Ian |
| contents | Following the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Democratic lawmakers and their supporters increasingly migrated from mainstream social media plat-forms like X (formerly Twitter) to decentralized alternatives such as Bluesky. This study investigates how Congressional Democrats use Bluesky to form networks of influence and disseminate political messaging in a platform environment that lacks algorithmic amplification. We employ a mixed-methods approach that combines social network analysis, expo-nential random graph modeling (ERGM), and transformer-based topic mod-eling (BERTopic) to analyze follows, mentions, reposts, and discourse pat-terns among 182 verified Democratic members of Congress. Our findings show that while party leaders such as Hakeem Jeffries and Elizabeth War-ren dominate visibility metrics, overlooked figures like Marcy Kaptur, Donald Beyer, and Dwight Evans occupy structurally central positions, suggesting latent influence within the digital party ecosystem. ERGM re-sults reveal significant homophily along ideological, state, and leadership lines, with Senate leadership exhibiting lower connectivity. Topic analysis identifies both shared themes (e.g., reproductive rights, foreign conflicts) and subgroup-specific issues, with The Squad showing the most distinct discourse profile. These results demonstrate the potential of decentralized platforms to reshape intra-party communication dynamics and highlight the need for continued computational research on elite political behavior in emerging digital environments. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_16858 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Who Leads in the Shadows? ERGM and Centrality Analysis of Congressional Democrats on Bluesky Hew, Gordon McCulloh, Ian Social and Information Networks H.3.3; H.2.8; I.2.7; J.4; K.4.1 Following the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Democratic lawmakers and their supporters increasingly migrated from mainstream social media plat-forms like X (formerly Twitter) to decentralized alternatives such as Bluesky. This study investigates how Congressional Democrats use Bluesky to form networks of influence and disseminate political messaging in a platform environment that lacks algorithmic amplification. We employ a mixed-methods approach that combines social network analysis, expo-nential random graph modeling (ERGM), and transformer-based topic mod-eling (BERTopic) to analyze follows, mentions, reposts, and discourse pat-terns among 182 verified Democratic members of Congress. Our findings show that while party leaders such as Hakeem Jeffries and Elizabeth War-ren dominate visibility metrics, overlooked figures like Marcy Kaptur, Donald Beyer, and Dwight Evans occupy structurally central positions, suggesting latent influence within the digital party ecosystem. ERGM re-sults reveal significant homophily along ideological, state, and leadership lines, with Senate leadership exhibiting lower connectivity. Topic analysis identifies both shared themes (e.g., reproductive rights, foreign conflicts) and subgroup-specific issues, with The Squad showing the most distinct discourse profile. These results demonstrate the potential of decentralized platforms to reshape intra-party communication dynamics and highlight the need for continued computational research on elite political behavior in emerging digital environments. |
| title | Who Leads in the Shadows? ERGM and Centrality Analysis of Congressional Democrats on Bluesky |
| topic | Social and Information Networks H.3.3; H.2.8; I.2.7; J.4; K.4.1 |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.16858 |