MediaCzar’s Matt Morrison wrote a very interesting post about US Representatives on twitter and their degree of connectedness. Here are a few salient points (FYI Matt is from the U.K).
First Matt points out that there are more Republicans than Democrats on twitter and that they don’t talk to each other very much.
The two groups are pretty clique-y. If it weren’t for Neil Abercrombie and John Culberson, there’s little chance that information would flow between the two groups. [...] Now the Neil Abercrombie/John Culberson bridges are so striking that I
thought it would be worth looking at the “betweenness” scores for this
group. Betweeness is a measure of how much (or little) a node controls
the flow of information in the network, its importance to the overall
structure.
Matt has more observations and great illustrations on his blog so head on over to MediaCzar to see them.
This clearly illustrates a divide in American party politics. How can there be any honest policy discussion when we only preach to the choir? I am encouraged to see folks like John Culberson on the GOP side and Neil Abercrombie on the other actually talking with members of other parties. It’s a phenomanon that there if far to little of these days.
In some ways the internet has brought people together and aided the free exchange of ideas but in many ways the internet attracts even greater segmentation than before. What it really comes down to isn’t the tools (cool as they may be), it’s the individuals who tweet back and forth accross the aisle who are making a difference in the way people think.
Cross Posted at TechRepublican.com
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