Researchers are increasingly confronting the need to examine the impacts of social media on democratic discourse. Analyzing 55,560 tweets from the official Twitter accounts of the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States, we examine approaches used by political parties to encourage sharing of their content within the contemporary political divide. We show that tweets sent by the Republican Party are more likely to be predominant in the language of assessment and that tweets predominant in the language of assessment lead to more retweets. Further, this effect is reduced as political parties gain control of successive branches of government. This is because successive increases in political power create fewer impediments to the implementation of a party’s political agenda. As impediments to action are reduced, so is regulatory fit for assessment-oriented language. Goal pursuit language shared on Twitter therefore reveals distinct approaches to obtaining and dealing with power across the U.S. political system, and constitutes an important tool for public policy makers to use in successfully conducting policy debates.

研究人员日益面临审查社交媒体对民主话语影响的需求。通过分析美国民主党和共和党官方Twitter帐户上的55560条推文，我们研究了各政党在当代政治鸿沟中鼓励分享其内容的方法。我们表明，共和党发送的推文在评估语言中更可能占主导地位，而在评估语言中占主导地位的推文会导致更多的转发。此外，随着各政党获得对政府相继分支机构的控制权，这种影响会减弱。这是因为政治权力的不断提高对党的政治议程的实施产生的障碍较少。随着行动障碍的减少，监管适合以评估为导向的语言。因此，在Twitter上分享的目标追求语言揭示了在整个美国政治体系中获取和处理权力的独特方法，并且构成了公共决策者成功进行政策辩论时使用的重要工具。