There have been a few articles lately about Republicans making better use of social media than Democrats. I had my doubts, but PolitiFact.com investigates:

First stop: Twitter.

Earlier this month, Mark Senak, senior vice president and partner at Fleishman-Hillard, a public relations firm in Washington, D.C., issued a report titled “Twongress: The Power of Twitter in Congress” in which he analyzed the Twitter use of all members of Congress. The findings surprised him.

In Congress, he found, there are 132 members using Twitter actively: 89 Republicans and 43 Democrats. It breaks down like this: In the Senate, there are 14 Republicans using Twitter compared to 11 Democrats; and in the House, there are 75 Republicans using Twitter (42.13 percent of the Republican Caucus) and 32 Democrats (12.45 percent of the Democratic Caucus). . . .

What about YouTube?

On Jan. 21, 2010, YouTube’s CitizenTube posted a year-end wrap-up that showed 89 percent of Republicans and 74 percent of Democrats in Congress have started YouTube channels to engage their constituents. More importantly, people are watching the Republican channels much more often. According to the report, eight of the top 10 most-viewed and most-subscribed YouTube channels in Congress are from the GOP, though Democrats took two of the top three spots. The top 4, in order, are Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Ca., and Boehner.

A tracking of YouTube views by industry analyst TubeMogul shows that with few exceptions, Republican videos consistently drew more clicks than those from Democrats. . . .

And lastly, Facebook, the favorite of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Palin’s Facebook page has more than 1.2 million fans.

No one in the House has that kind of reach. And we couldn’t find any comprehensive analysis of engagement on FaceBook by members of Congress. But as of Jan. 22, 2010, Boehner had 31,757 fans of his page, compared to 8,745 for Pelosi. . . .

But while House Republicans may rightly crow about deeper engagement in social media than their Democratic counterparts, Senak. the author of the study, says neither side is doing particularly well compared to other large institutions. Both parties have a minority of members engaged in Twitter. And neither side has fully embraced the give-and-take of Twitter. Most members have elected to follow very few other people and rarely “re-tweet.” In other words, he said, they are mostly using Twitter as a soapbox.

In spite of the conclusion in final paragraph above, the fact that so many Congressmen have seized on modern communication channels is surprising. More surprising is the Republican’s lead, given Obama’s rather effective use of these channels during his campaign.

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