It only takes 30 social media posts to influence your congressman
A survey of congressional aides found that eight in ten said just 30 posts on social media advocating for a cause or bill would be enough to make their office pay attention. More than a third of the staffers said that only ten posts could snag congressional attention.
"Most Americans think you have to be a special interest group with a big campaign involving hundreds of people to be heard by Congress," said Brad Fitch of the non-partisan Congressional Management Foundation, which conducted the survey. "But this shows that a couple dozen people can make a big impact by weighing in on a member's Twitter or Facebook page."
But concerned citizens have to be speedy: The surveyed staffers say they stopped checking constituent responses to a given social media post after about six hours.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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