Understanding the Value of Floor Speeches in a Multimedia Environment

• In Event: Politicians' Use of Social Media

Abstract

Members of Congress (MCs) use floor speeches to signal their colleagues and constituents, but to achieve the latter people must view the speeches themselves. Unfortunately, whether it is radio, television, or the internet, we know very little about the way floor speeches reach the American public. Using a large collection of floor speeches obtained from C-SPAN, the present study considers the extent to which floor speeches appear on YouTube, Twitter/X, and cable news broadcasts. These results will then be used as the basis of an online experiment which will assess the value of each of these dissemination methods to voters.

Floor speeches are not inherently newsworthy. Not only are there literally hundreds of
floor speeches each day, but it also is difficult to say which floor speeches best represent the nature of a given legislative debate. In these instances, news organizations are more likely to select floor speeches which elicit an emotional response from viewers (Graber and Dunaway, 2017). Similar to images (Graber, 1996) and music (Grabe et al., 2000), we argue floor speeches that “provoke emotional responses and physiological stimulation or arousal among the members of the audience” are more likely to be aired by CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC (Uribe and Gunter, 2007, 209). Indeed, Graber (1994) found news directors only covered legislative sessions when there were intense emotional exchanges, otherwise floor debates were “not really worth covering” (496).

These same types of speeches are likely also valuable to the members of Congress themselves, meaning they are also more likely to be shared by them on platforms like YouTube and Twitter/X. With respect to social media, engagement is key. Prior work using FRMI’s have found that ad recall is positively associated with emotional arousal (Bakalash and Riemer, 2013). Similarly, Berger and Milkman (2012) found that news articles that promoted emotional arousal were more likely to go viral. As explained in their excellent review article, Schreiner, Fischer and Riedl (2019), point out that emotion not only plays a role with respect to engagement, but also can also impact many other facets of communication, meaning MCs who want to reach constituents on platforms like YouTube and Twitter/X are more likely to post arousing content, including floor speeches.

What is interesting about these two processes, is that the former has a gatekeeping function that is not present in the latter. “Gatekeeping” involves “selecting, writing, editing, positioning,
scheduling, repeating and otherwise massaging information to become news” (Reese, Vos, and
Shoemaker, 2009, 73). For example, economic pressures may entice news organizations to only cover certain hot-button issues (e.g., Hamilton, 2004). This insistence on “relevancy”
(see Harcup and O’Neill, 2016, 1482) would suggest most of the congressional coverage is determined by the issues of the day, but it can also be driven by the characteristics of the members themselves. Since journalists assume the actions of the “powerful elite” have a greater consequence (see Harcup and O’Neill, 2016, 1471), both seniority (Kuklinski and Sigelman, 1992) and institutional position (Cook, 1989; Johnson and O’Grady, 2013) likely also influence congressional coverage. As politics continues to become an increasingly mediated process (Bennett and Entman, 2001), this too likely gives some MCs and the issues they advance an inherent advantage on the House floor.

Such “gatekeeping” does not exist when it comes to social media, making the comparison between the two especially interesting. However, this study is also interested in how voter value each of these approaches, which is why we will use the results from this observational design as the basis of an upcoming survey experiment which compares the effectiveness of emotional/non-emotional speeches on these various platforms (cable news, YouTube, and Twitter/X). As voters increasingly rely on social media for political information, it is interesting to think about how videos of floor speeches are valued, especially in comparison to other legislative activities. We suspect that videos of floor speeches are more valuable than prior literature suggests and that this general effect will be most pronounced with younger demographics.

In sum, this study aims to better understand (1) what types of floor speeches are most likely to disseminated on social media and picked up on cable news broadcasts, and (2) how does the method of dissemination impact voters’ evaluations of the speeches themselves. We do this by using a novel collection of floor speech videos, cable news transcripts and congressional social media posts. We think both our substantive and methodological contributions will speak to a wide audience, especially those who are interested in how members of Congress have evolved to better engage with a multimedia environment.

Authors

• Myriam Shiran, Purdue University

• Jasper Neath

• Jake Stanton Truscott, University of Georgia

• Bryce Dietrich, Purdue University