Ozean Media Announces @AnnaforFlorida as Winner of The ‘@’ Award
Rep. Anna V. Eskamani is Recognized as the Twitter Power User for the Florida House of Representatives
Alachua, FL – May 17, 2023– Ozean Media, a political affairs firm specializing in research, data, and media, announces @AnnaforFlorida (Representative Anna Eskamani) as the winner of The ‘@’ Award for Florida House of Representatives.
“Rep. Eskamani is the clear leader among her peers in the Florida House in the use of Twitter,” said Alex Patton, Managing Partner of Ozean Media. “She not only broadcasts her own messages, but also engages with others on the platform. If other elected officials are looking to up their Twitter game, Rep. Eskamani is a model worth studying.”
“It is no secret that significant political communication has been happening on Twitter, and Ozean Media is studying the various ways elected officials use or don’t use Twitter. The best in class rather than only broadcasting are interacting with people outside the political bubble and are using rich media such as images and videos”, concluded Patton.
“We knew studying Twitter at a time of massive changes on the platform would be risky, but we believe it was worth it. We believe we collected the largest sample of tweets from Florida Legislators to date, and we have gained a greater understanding of how elected officials are using Twitter,” said Ben Torpey, Ozean Media Consultant.
The ‘@’ Award will be presented at to Representative Anna Eskamani at her convenience in late May 2023. More information about the award, the final top 10 ranking, week-to-week standings, and the final report can be found at: Twitter Final Report 2023 FL Legislature
About Ozean Media
Ozean Media is a strategic partner in political affairs, providing consulting and public relations services to drive the movement of audiences toward a specific policy or cause. Ozean leverages research, data, message development, and media to achieve our clients’ goals. More information can be found at ozeanmedia.comhttps://ozeanmedia.com.
About The ‘@’ Award
The ‘@’ Award recognizes the top Twitter user among Florida’s House of Representatives and Senate based on a proprietary algorithm that weighs factors such as follower count, tweets, retweets, likes, and engagement. The award was originally scheduled to collect data until May 5, 2023, but Twitter’s API changes restricted access to data, so the award is based on data collected through Feb 26 – April 28, 2023.
Given a specified time interval (March 5 – May 7 or Florida Session’ sine die whichever is later) and a list of Twitter handles, the algorithm assigns a tailored weighting to variables including tweets, retweets replies, follower count, following count, and effective reach. The initial ranking was done for a period of the week before Florida’s legislative session started or Feb 26 – March 4.
Unfortunately, the period for rankings ended on April 28 due to changes in Twitter’s API that drastically changed and reduced access to tweets and other data on the platform.
Therefore, final rankings were decided using the period of Feb 27 – April 28, 2023. Our Twitter algorithm, while recognizing Follower Count and number of new tweets, also attempted to recognize different uses of the platform – to include other activities other than simply broadcasting tweets.
Key Findings
Representative Anna Eskamani is the Power User of Twitter in the Florida House.
Senator Shevrin “Shev” Jones is the Power User of Twitter in the Florida Senate.
Power Users use Twitter differently – Power Users interact not only broadcast.
While the algorithm had to take follower count into consideration and raw number of new tweets, it also indicates a correlation between higher follower counts and different types of tweets.
Members that not only tweeted, but also replied and retweeted others, correlate with higher follower counts. It appears, those that have been able to grow a large audience are interacting with other users, not only posting and using the tool primarily as a broadcast medium.
Members that not only tweeted, but included media (photos, video, and GIFs), correlate with higher follower counts.
Final Ranking
Representative Anna Eskamani (D, FL 52) and Senator Shevrin “Shev” Jones (D, FL 34) are awarded The @ Award recognizing their “Power Use” of Twitter during the 2023 Regular Session of the Florida Legislature.
Both Representative Eskamani and Senator Jones lead the pack in Twitter usage from the beginning, and they never looked back. Other elected officials vied for the 2nd through 10th spots, but Eskamai and Jones were significantly ahead of their peers.
2023 Final House Rankings
Twitter Name
Ranking
@AnnaForFlorida
1
@micheleforfl
2
@AngieNixon
3
@RAlexAndradeFL
4
@DanDaley
5
@Gantt4Florida
6
@SpencerRoachFL
7
@BernyJacques
8
@FentriceForFL
9
@ChipLaMarca
10
2023 Final Senate Rankings
Twitter Name
Ranking
@ShevrinJones
1
@LeaderBookFL
2
@loriberman
3
@LindaStewartFL
4
@senpizzo
5
@IleanaGarciaUSA
6
@debbie_mayfield
7
@Kathleen4SWFL
8
@TinaPolsky
9
@GovGoneWild
10
Content
Content varies with large blocs of “Thanks fellow member x for passing the/my bill through committee/chamber”, holiday greetings, and tweets on the abortion issue.
Below are word clouds of the tweets of House and Senate members.
House Tweet Word Cloud
Senate Tweet Word Cloud
Tagging/Mentions
When elected officials @ someone, they are most likely to @ a fellow Legislator or elected official.
The second most likely entity is a Florida press entity.
A cursory review of the tweet data indicates precious few interactions with constituents.
Hashtags
House and Senate members used Twitter hashtags infrequently during the session. The most frequently used hashtag was “#latergram.”
Most prolific Tweeters
As one would expect, the algorithm rewarded elected officials that tweeted often.
In the House, Representative Eskamai was the top tweeter with 768 total tweets.
In the Senate, Senator Linda Stewart (D, FL 13 – final ranking #4) was the most prolific tweeter with 364 total tweets.
However, Senator Stewart’s relatively lower follower count prevented her from climbing higher in the rankings.
Largest Following
Representative Eskamani shines when it comes to follower count with 90,523 followers.
Senator Jones lead the way in the Senate with a follower count of 35,004.
To put these numbers in context, the highest follower count of any elected official in Florida is Senator Marco Rubio at 4,518,971, followed closely by Governor Ron DeSantis with 4,139,420.
However, Rep. Eskamani has more followers than half of Florida’s Congressional delegation, and Rep. Eskamani and Senator Jones have more followers than a majority of Florida’s statewide elected cabinet members.
Interactivity of Tweets (tweets by type)
Our algorithm rewarded elected officials for interacting on Twitter rather than simply broadcasting. The algorithm assigned weight for Replies and ReTweets.
This is one of the main reasons elected officials with smaller follower counts saw increases in their over ranking.
For example, Senator Linda Stewart (final ranking 4) had a follower count of 3,848; however, 46% of her tweets were replies or retweets. Representative Alex Andrade (final ranking 4) has a follower count of 5,717 however, over 62% of his tweets were replies or retweets.
Media Use
On average, 40% of tweets of the top 10 Power Users in each chamber contained media (photo, video, or animated GIF). Of the tweets that contained media, the vast majority (80%) were photos.
Platform Use
While the algorithm did not use ‘platform’ as ranking criteria, the information was collected.
Over 85% of the tweets sent from the top 10 Power Users were sent using Twitter for iPhone.
The remaining 15% were sent using the Twitter web app and Twitter for iPad.
Few rely on third-party apps like TweetDeck or Hootsuite. However, those not in the top 10 appear to use third-party apps at a higher rate.
While this needs more research, it is our theory, higher usage of third-party apps may be an indication that staff is managing social media accounts rather than the member. We observe an increase in the use of third-party platforms with “official press accounts” of Florida’s Congressional delegation.
Final Thoughts
It is of note tinged with sadness that Twitter is making its API cost prohibitive to researchers.
Without underwriting, it is unlikely that additional studies can be conducted, and we think that is a shame.
It was fun while it lasted, but our Florida Legislature Tweet Tracker is coming to an end.
With one week left in the regular session of Florida’s legislature, Ozean was notified that Twitter has made changes to its API that have drastically restricted third-party applications’ access to tweets and other data on the platform. In response, we are no longer able to collect the data needed for the ranking algorithm.
As of this morning, we are unable to continue to collect data from Twitter. As a result, we are finalizing the @Award today and will no longer be able to track tweets from Florida legislators.
We knew that entering this project, we risked being at the whims of Elon Musk, who acquired Twitter in October 2022. We are sadden to see our fears realized.
While we are disappointed that we can no longer track tweets from Florida legislators, we are grateful for the opportunity to have done so for the 2023 regular session.
We hope that Twitter will reconsider its decision to restrict third-party access to its data.
In the meantime, we will finalize and issue a final report in the coming weeks.
The results by precinct results have been released for Florida. Precincts are the smallest unit of analysis that we have election results, and I find them interesting.
So what does the data tell us?
In this post, we will only explore the results for Governor’s race in 2022.
Messy Data
Even then, the data gets messy – there are 168 precincts that have no votes cast in them, most of them have no registered voters in them. A few have 1 or 2 voters. Who knows? We will exclude them as outliers.
Then there are the even weirder precincts. There are another 109 precincts with less then 10 total votes cast. Again, who knows? We will also exclude these from our analysis as also outliers.
Data Description
There are a total of 6007 precincts in Florida. We have excluded 277 precincts with less than 10 total votes cast.
We are exploring 5,730 precincts in Florida.
Election Results – Data Check
A quick double-check against – official results. The state shows Ron DeSantis winning with 59.4% of the vote and Crist with 40% of the vote. The LPF candidate (Roos) received .2% of the vote, and a NPA (Gimenez) received .4%.
Comparing our precinct-level data file, it is almost an exact match.
Count precincts
DeSantis
Crist
Roos
Gimenez
6007
4,614,209
3,106,313
19,299
31,577
59.4%
40.0%
0.2%
0.4%
Somehow Governor Ron DeSantis is down one vote, but we continue on.
When we exclude the previously mentioned precincts, DeSantis loses 249 votes, Crist loses 148, Roos loses none, and Giminez loses 6. In the 277 excluded precincts, we lose 403 total votes or less than .006 of the vote. Immaterial.
Final Data Set
The final dataset we are exploring is 5,730 precincts. Those precincts cast 7,770,995 votes.
In this dataset, DeSantis won 69% of the precincts, Crist won 30.1%, in less than 1 % of the precincts, there was a dead tie.
FUN FACTS:
The largest precinct with a tie? ALA056. (Alachua 56 – Covenant Presbyterian Church). In the books with a 66% turnout, 1,093 votes for DeSantis, 1,093 votes for Crist..
The county with the most precincts ending in a tie? Palm Beach County – 5.
Winners
winner
count
rep_percent
dem_percent
average_delta
dem
1752
34%
65%
31%
rep
3963
67%
33%
34%
tie
15
50%
50%
0%
Grand Total
5730
57%
43%
33%
DeSantis won 69% of the precincts or 3,963 precincts.
Crist won 31% of the precincts or 1,752 precincts.
On average, the spread between DeSantis and Crist was 33%.
In precincts won by DeSantis, the average spread was 33% (67%-33%). In precincts won by Crist, the average spread was 31% (65%-34%).
Divided Florida
17% of Florida’s precincts have a delta of less than 10%. Those precincts have a registration of 2,518,332 voters and 1,271,336 votes cast. A 51% turnout.
82% of Florida’s precincts have a delta of more than 10%. These precincts have a registration of 11,970,376 and 6,499,659 votes cast. A 53% turnout.
Interestingly, the highest turnout by precinct is found in precincts that had a delta of between 30% and 50% – 57% of those voters turned out. (I am fairly certain there is a research paper exploring that data point.)
delta
count
count_per
rep_percent
dem_percent
Average TO
0%-9.99%
984
17%
50%
49%
51%
10%-19.99%
955
17%
52%
47%
52%
20%-29.99%
918
16%
55%
44%
54%
30%-39.99%
852
15%
60%
39%
57%
40%-49.99%
713
12%
64%
35%
57%
50%-59.99%
500
9%
62%
37%
52%
60%-69.99%
381
7%
61%
38%
51%
70%-79.99%
262
5%
54%
46%
49%
80%-89.99%
149
3%
53%
46%
49%
90%+
16
0%
56%
43%
51%
Grand Total
5730
100%
57%
43%
53%
Competitive Precincts
It was my intent to map the precincts that have a delta of less than 10%.
Dr. McDonald of the University of Florida and the US Election project has the closest thing we have to a complete shapefile for the entire state of Florida.
There is a glitch (at least in doing a quick analysis) in that some counties report data using a precinct name that differs from the shapefiles (DADE, BROWARD, PALM BEACH, OSCEOLA are the large ones.) I started to remap them, and got Dade and Broward done, but Palm Beach may have renamed their precincts all together…so a couple of holes that I just don’t have the time to go into and match.
However, we can look at most of I-4 (excluding Osceola & Lake).
Conclusions
What can anyone draw from this cursory review?
Just that few precincts in Florida are truly competitive.
There is a debate in political science on whether this sorting is happening on purpose – with politics driving “the big sort.”
Bill Bishop wrote The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded American is Tearing Us Apart in 2008 “Armed with original and startling demographic data, he showed how Americans have been sorting themselves over the past three decades into homogeneous communities — not at the regional level, or the red-state/blue-state level, but at the micro level of city and neighborhood.” (thebigsort.com)
Fiorina, one of my favortie contrarions, critques Bishop for his reliance presidential election returns saying they are often inconsistent for other offices. Fiorina uses county level data to refute Bishop.
Fiorina sums up his critque by saying ” There is no evidence that a geographic partisan “big sort” like that described by Bishop is ongoing, and even if it were, its effects would be far less important than Bishop and those who support his thesis fear.”
Yeah, about that…
17% of the precincts in Florida are within 10 points in a Governor’s race. 17%!
Maybe time to re-fresh the research…and while we are at – let’s explore that bump in turnout between 30%-50%.
How can Republicans overcome self funding celebrities or popular businesspersons?
Why would we?
A celebrity or popular business person begins with one or two the most valuable things in politics – name ID & money.
If a celebrity brings multi-millions in name ID then that is money a campaign can spend on other things other than establishing a bio.
For example, I don’t know Tim Tebow outside his press, but if he wanted to run for a Congressional seat in NW Florida, he would start with a massive advantage. He would start on third base and sometimes depending on context that is enough. Would he be a good candidate? No idea.
If a self-funding popular business person brings millions to the table that is valuable time a campaign can spend on other things. Early money is one of the largest early strategic advantages a campaign can have.
I think what you are really asking is how can we overcome running terrible self-funding celebrities or terrible popular businesspersons, right? The answer is stop supporting them.
How can Republicans become the party of the majority again?
In some places the Republicans are a majority and in some places even a super-majority, but I think you are asking about national / presidential politics.
A multi-part answer:
Better candidates: As we have seen, and will likely see today, name ID combined with terrible candidate quality isn’t a great combination.
Govern: The American people want their government to look slightly better than a middle school cafeteria food fight (well most of us do). A Congress that can govern would go a long way.
STOP the stupid shit: Stop enabling the antisemitic, racist, 4chan crowds.
Suburban Women : right now this seems to be the vote most in flux. They are picking of the less of two scary versions and you never want to mess with moms.
Embrace the Democrats mistakes. As they have shown, there will be many.
Conclusion
Celebrity or self – funded candidates aren’t necessarily a terrible thing, and they can offer tremendous advantages. Let’s just stop picking and promoting terrible ones.
The question asked is “What will it take for federal regulators to actually exercise their authority? (e.g. DoJ & Antitrust, SEC & insider trading, EPA & fracking/pipelines)?”
Ahhhh, regulators. One the most boring, yet critical functions of government.
Government Regulation
Conservatives have a default answer for most federal regulators – fire them all or weaken them to the point of irrelevance. They often say ‘no’ or ‘maybe’ ad-nauseum slowing us down, and they seemingly have zero interest in the time value of money. Frankly, some of this reputation is 100% earned. I once walked into a meeting with a client to meet with a regulator/government staff, and my client was greeted with a “Man, we haven’t bankrupted you yet? Ha Ha.” It wasn’t funny.
But I don’t think me railing against government bureaucracy is the point of your question. So, to explore your question, lets agree that the federal regulators that you speak of are fine upstanding government servants carrying out their charge to the best of their abilities.
Our agency has done work in the clean energy space and land development space and this comprises most of our experience. I will say for the record, most of upper staff members in these spaces are smart as heck and understand the bureaucratic process. I am almost always appreciative of their expertise in their fields.
BUT…..the appointment officials of regulatory bodies often leave a lot to be desired for because of the concept of “regulatory capture.”
One must never forget, at its heart, the appointed officials were appointed because they at the time of their appointment aligned with the current administration. These are political bodies. Three phrases: Pipelines, Joe Machin, FERC Chairman.
And it is the politics that leads to regulatory capture.
Florida: An Example of Regulatory Capture
Let me give you an example in Florida – The Florida Public Service Commission (PSC). This body is to regulate utilities in the State of Florida. They are to be the safeguard, patrolling if Florida’s monopoly utility industry is justified in their actions & requests. These people are routinely making multi-million if not billion-dollar decisions, and in my opinion are 100% captured by the utility industry.
Florida’s monopoly utilities dominate the communities they operate in by steering philanthropic donations to key groups, sponsoring everything from business conventions to little league teams.
The PSC is to have a citizen’s advocate or the office of public counsel. The legislature promptly removed the lawyer who kind of, tepidly fought against utility rate increases – at least making them work for it. Yeah, he was replaced by a lobbyist from the utility industry.
And finally, this system of Legislative nomination, executive branch appointment, and PSC regulation allows everyone to shirk any responsibility. Especially, with elected officials getting to blame the faceless bureaucrats at the PSC avoiding any electoral blame.
Put in the simplest of terms – the entire game is rigged.
Why does this regulatory capture exist? Because the incentives are there and extremely high. The monopoly utilities are going to act like monopolies by using all their power and money to reward supporters, punish defectors, buy the love of people who are indifferent, and influence the process. The financial gains are too high (remember BILLIONS) for them to do anything else. Monopolies and massive industries (pharma, energy, banking, etc) are going to do everything they can legally (and in gray areas) to win.
As you see in Florida, we have a complete failure of Florida’s regulatory ‘system’ due to nearly complete regulatory capture.
Frankly, the PSC is so unresponsive to Florida’s ratepayers and Florida’s citizens this is why I wrote an op-ed calling for the way we organize this body – changing from an appointed position to an elected position. It is unlikely to happen or even get off the ground.
Political Science hasn’t spent a lot of time researching this phenomenon and there are no simple answers.
It is unlikely regulatory capture is ever eliminated; more likely we need to work to minimize it.
Some have called for deregulation (my personal default), others have called for making these regulators answer to the public, but I would think that in this case, the lowest hanging fruit is the creating/making the watchdog or “Office of Public Counsel” more independent and interdisciplinary – almost like an Inspector General office.
You may also be able to tell, I am completely cynical about the odds of any positive change happening. With most of these systems, the incentives are all aligned against the “exercise of their authority.”
It could be argued that Florida’s monopoly utility industry had the absolute worst years with scandal after scandal. They are likely to get most if not all, they are asking for from Florida’s ‘regulatory body.’
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