TY - JOUR
T1 - Congressional Communication in a Pandemic
T2 - “Follow the Leader” Politics and Responsive Representation
AU - Cormack, Lindsey
AU - Meidlinger, Kirsten
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
©, Copyright © American University, Center for Congressional and presidential Studies.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - The COVID-19 pandemic touched every part of the United States. Government officials were tasked with communicating information to the public about a quickly changing crisis. This article aims to ask and answer important questions surrounding how differently situated legislators discussed the outbreak of the novel coronavirus of 2019 and resultant pandemic of COVID-19 with their constituents in official communications. We assess a theory of responsive representation as well as a theory positing that co-partisan legislators took their cues from the president, which we call follow the leader politics. To facilitate this study, we have created a new dataset of COVID-19 deaths by congressional district. We find that legislators who saw more in-district fatalities in the earlier parts of the pandemic sent more COVID-19 communications than others. We also find that co-partisans were more likely to use derogatory terminology to refer to COVID-19 in official communications and were more likely to tout hydroxychloroquine. There are limits to follow the leader politics, however: when it came to mask use, both Democrats and Republicans in Congress encouraged constituents to do so as soon as the CDC and Surgeon General guidelines indicated.
AB - The COVID-19 pandemic touched every part of the United States. Government officials were tasked with communicating information to the public about a quickly changing crisis. This article aims to ask and answer important questions surrounding how differently situated legislators discussed the outbreak of the novel coronavirus of 2019 and resultant pandemic of COVID-19 with their constituents in official communications. We assess a theory of responsive representation as well as a theory positing that co-partisan legislators took their cues from the president, which we call follow the leader politics. To facilitate this study, we have created a new dataset of COVID-19 deaths by congressional district. We find that legislators who saw more in-district fatalities in the earlier parts of the pandemic sent more COVID-19 communications than others. We also find that co-partisans were more likely to use derogatory terminology to refer to COVID-19 in official communications and were more likely to tout hydroxychloroquine. There are limits to follow the leader politics, however: when it came to mask use, both Democrats and Republicans in Congress encouraged constituents to do so as soon as the CDC and Surgeon General guidelines indicated.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85114620090&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85114620090&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/07343469.2021.1955037
DO - 10.1080/07343469.2021.1955037
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85114620090
SN - 0734-3469
VL - 49
SP - 273
EP - 298
JO - Congress and the Presidency
JF - Congress and the Presidency
IS - 3
ER -