Congressional leaders published nearly 800K posts on social media platforms in 2020

Members from the 116th Congress published nearly 800,000 posts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube in 2020.

Quorum shared some findings about how our nation’s leaders have been using social media in an annual report. The downtown D.C.-based company is the maker of customer relationship management software that tracks what’s happening in government. Quorum analyzed 784,614 posts using its platform Quorum Federal, a federal legislative tracking software that can monitor governmental conversations online, connect consumers to officials and create reports of specific findings. The report covers Congressional activity on social media from Jan. 1 to Nov. 30, 2020.

One of the most interesting findings to this reporter is that every single member of Congress posted on Facebook in 2020. Here’s a breakdown by percentage of members who used each social media platform last year:

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Despite Facebook’s widespread appeal, Twitter is the clearly preferred social media platform according to number of posts for Congressional leaders, with 500,366 tweets sent last year, compared to the 241,250 posts published on Facebook. Seems like Congress really hasn’t gotten behind the Instagram wave like millennials have since our nation’s leaders only made 24,317 posts on the platform in 2020. And YouTube only saw 18,681.

On average, Congressional leaders collectively published 1,604 tweets per day. Overall, Democrats spent a more significant amount of time on Twitter compared to Republicans, accounting for 313,739 of the total Congressional tweets in 2020. Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio along with Democratic Senators Ed Markey and Dick Durbin were the most active tweeters from the Senate last year.

As far as former President Donald Trump’s social media usage, here are some quick stats:

• 14,314 tweets
• 7,329 Facebook posts
• 1,317 Instagram posts
• 4,759 YouTube uploads
• Top hashtag: #maga
• Top account he retweeted: Himself — that is, @realDonaldTrump — from the presidential account

Some other metrics to consider when reading this report: The analysis does not include retweets or Stories on Instagram and Facebook.

If you’re interested in seeing how Congressional leaders discuss COVID-19 specifically online, Quorum developed a dashboard for that, too: #covid19 dominated hashtag use among Congressional leaders last year across all platforms, with 48,541 posts including it.