Page 5 - Contact Your Lawmakers Research

Contacting Your Member of Congress - Fact or Fiction? Research Project

Does posting on Facebook Influence decisions made by Congress?
So now for the big question . . . is all that posting on social media making a difference with policy decisions

made by our lawmakers? Are there verifiable instances of lawmakers actually changing a policy decision
as a direct result of Facebook posts?

Understand that the foundation for members of Congress to represent you is whether or not you are their

geographic constituent . . . do you live in their district.

However, the growing use of social media is changing the nature and challenges of representation in at least
two ways. First, social media users can be anonymous, have multiple accounts, and some are fake users.
Users can fill out their profile information with as little information as they choose and can “turn off”

geolocation services. So it's not always possible to know where a specific user is located. This presents a
unique challenge for Congress as they want to interact mostly or exclusively with their geographic
constituents.

Secondly, users could be underage, unregistered or disqualified voters, they may not be U.S. Citizens, and
they could actually be living in other countries. In addition, there are two problems with the data.

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