Episode 234: The Bird App

11/3/22-- This week on The Horse Race, Lisa and Jenn are easing out of spooky season and into more T drama. Steve Poftak, current general manager of the MBTA, will be stepping down on January 3, only two days before a new governor will take office.

Later in the show, the team sets the stage for election day with the help of Yawu Miller of the Bay State Banner. From the top of the ticket, to down ballot races, we run through what to watch in the upcoming week.

Then Chris Oates, founder of Legislata, drops by the pod to talk Twitter. He's done research into the purpose of the app in the political sphere and who uses #mapoli (and how it's pronounced).

Don't forget to listen to our ballot question rundown episodes if you haven't voted yet!

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Full Show Transcript Below:

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:00:25] This week on The Horse Race, we're setting the stage for Election Day and then talking about Twitter. It's Thursday, November 3rd. [00:00:34][8.5]

Jennifer Smith: [00:00:43] Welcome back to The Horse Race, your weekly look at politics, policy and elections in Massachusetts. I'm Jennifer Smith here with Lisa Kashinsky. We're sadly missing, Steve, who is off today. So send good vibes toward Melrose, whatever direction that's in from Boston. I don't know. I only know where things are relative to Boston. But I hope, speaking of, you know, how your streets are laid out, that all the giant skeletons, I assume, are also on your blocks. Didn't murder you over a Halloween weekend. Lisa, did you survive spooky season or are you a ghost? [00:01:16][32.3]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:01:16] I might be a ghost. Spooky season. Too much spooky. It just I have been reduced to ghost. [00:01:23][6.6]

Jennifer Smith: [00:01:25] I'm trying not to do a macabre segway here, but I guess speaking of the to be departed but not off this mortal coil sense changes at the MBTA leadership level. How did I do? [00:01:38][13.4]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:01:39] All right. Oh, Steve Poftak is not dead. [00:01:40][1.0]

Jennifer Smith: [00:01:43] No, he's fine. [00:01:44][0.7]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:01:45] He's totally fine. But he is. He is stepping down as general manager of the MBTA on January 3rd, which is two days before the next governor is sworn in. So a little chaos in our lives here. [00:01:58][13.5]

Jennifer Smith: [00:01:59] So what are the dynamics there in place? So this means that Maura Healey, if she won or Geoff Diehl if he won, would definitely be in charge of picking a new GM? Or would Baker still have some input into the process? [00:02:11][12.0]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:02:12] He might still have some input into the process, again, because of kind of the timing of this, where he kind of suggested to reporters last night, you know, at a campaign event that there might be an interim GM named just to kind of bridge this transition between gubernatorial administrations. And, you know, he said that that wouldn't happen without having some kind of input, you know, having conversations with the next administration. And he said that it will very much be up to the next governor and the T's oversight board to choose Poftak's replacement. But it definitely is going to create a lot of political pressure very early on the next governor there already. Every everyone in their mother pretty much weighing in on who should lead the team. And that's only going to be amplified and accelerated now that we have an actual departure date for Steve Poftak. [00:03:08][55.3]

Jennifer Smith: [00:03:09] Oh, man. Yeah. The tweets were truly flying from the entire delegation about, you know, what this departure could mean, what the opportunity is. We're going to be talking about Twitter and kind of what that universe looks like later. But what was the gist coming from our elected representatives about what they'd like to see in a new GM? [00:03:29][20.5]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:03:31] No names yet. Obviously it's early and nobody wants to play their hand about who they might be thinking about for the job. But there are some kind of character traits and, you know, job experience the people have listed. You know, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu told me that the next GM should have a deep understanding of the agency experience managing an organization of the scale of the team. And as you know, kind of an interesting last note from her familiarity with the community and political context to help drive decision making around the team. So that's definitely interesting is, you know, Wu looks to kind of have her relationships with the next administration and the next next leader of the team. [00:04:17][46.6]

Jennifer Smith: [00:04:18] Yeah, it absolutely did feel as as all of the electeds were tweeting about this, I was getting real dating profile. We are looking for energy off of that. But, you know, transition at the MBTA, the trains are still slow for now. What else is new? But Lisa, what are we doing here today? [00:04:36][17.8]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:04:37] We are doing a final run through of the statewide and down ballot races leading up to Election Day, which is finally almost here. It's a little bit later this year because Tuesday was actually the first Tuesday in November. But we're voting on November 8th if you haven't cast your ballot already. And then we're talking about Twitter and looking into some research that's been done about the map hashtag. Shall we get into it? [00:05:02][25.3]

Jennifer Smith: [00:05:03] Let us tweet. With Election Day. I mean, I guess technical, in-person Election Day less than a week away. We're running through our top races to watch as the countdown continues. Today, Lisa and I are joined by Yawu Miller of the Bay State banner to help us set the stage. Thanks for being back on The Horse Race Yawu [00:05:26][23.2]

Yawu Miller: [00:05:28] Thanks for having me. [00:05:28][0.5]

Jennifer Smith: [00:05:29] So let's kind of start by chatting about the top of the ballot here at the top of the ticket, Healey and Driscoll versus Diehl and Allen. Lisa, we talked earlier in the episode about how leadership is going to have to pick a new team manager, but there's also a bit of back and forth around tax returns. What's going on there? [00:05:47][18.0]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:05:48] Basically that the candidates aren't releasing them. Maura Healey has released tax returns in, you know, prior run for attorney general, but they're holding onto them this time. There are some disclosures available, you know, through the state anyway. But yeah, we've gotten used to politicians releasing their tax returns, particularly Democrats, and they're not doing it this time. [00:06:10][21.9]

Jennifer Smith: [00:06:11] And she's also really trouncing Diehl in the fundraising side of things, too. We've talked about polls in the past. It still looks like she's up about 26 points in the Suffolk poll from mid-October. One question that I would love to get your take on Yahoo! Is this one thing that Suffolk asked, which is if you had to pick, would you say your vote for Geoff Diehl is more of a vote for Diehl or against Healey? And then they asked the same question to Healey voters. And what you saw was that there was a higher proportion of people who said they were voting for Diehl against Healey than people who said they were voting for Healey against Diehl. So obviously it's a little bit of a sleepy election season. But what have you been watching in terms of what sparks voter enthusiasm on either the Democratic or Republican side? [00:06:57][45.8]

Yawu Miller: [00:06:58] I haven't really seen a lot of enthusiasm. I was, you know, at an early voting day and it was pretty quiet. You know, there weren't there weren't people holding signs, just Chris Worell who's running, you know, a local race from the fifth Suffolk District. It was was the only person out holding signs. You know, there was just very little activity within, you know, like at an early polling place where you'd normally expect to see at least a little more. So, you know, there seems to be more energy behind the ballot questions there locally with unions pushing people to turn out for that than for the actual gubernatorial candidate. [00:07:47][48.7]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:07:49] Can you remember an open governor's race, an open seat governor's race that's been this quiet? [00:07:54][5.7]

Yawu Miller: [00:07:56] I don't I mean, I think, you know, and again, I think it's a function of the what many people are seeing is the implosion of the GOP as it, you know, moved into Trump territory. The the money's not there for for deal. And the you know, I mean, I it's they've not given unenrolled voters a viable alternative to the Democratic candidate. So in that context, the the number of people who are voting for deal as a protest against Healey, you know, and not in support of deal and have shown a lack of enthusiasm on the Republican side. [00:08:35][39.7]

Jennifer Smith: [00:08:36] And of course, candidate that's familiar to all of us in Boston and now obviously statewide, Andrea Campbell seeking the attorney general's position against Jay McMahon, also significantly doing better. On the Democratic side, Campbell's up about 20 points. She's significantly outraising and outspending McMahon. She's the chosen successor of Maura Healey. And I guess to that point, what I'm curious about is to what extent does it feel to you, like all of these races are sort of interlinked? There was more disagreement between, it seems like the more progressive sides in the more moderate sides of the Democratic Party in the primary, as there always were. But does it seem like there is a pretty consistent slate if you know which party you might be leaning toward this year? I was kind of interested by the fact that we have so much consistency up and down the statewide ballots. [00:09:30][53.5]

Yawu Miller: [00:09:31] Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's also interesting, too, that the I mean, not it's not it's predictable. It's not interesting. But, you know, Healey is campaigning with Campbell. She's campaigning with other Democratic candidates. And, you know, our our outgoing Republican governor, Charlie Baker, is only backing a Maura who's probably the most moderate Republican on the on the statewide ballot. And, you know, he did vote for Trump in 2020, but in today's GOP, he counts as a moderate. [00:10:07][36.3]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:10:09] So we will get to that in a couple of minutes. But while we're still on the AG's race, I just want to ask, you know, especially for our more Boston listeners, you know, Andrea Campbell was a city councilor, a city council president, finished third in the mayor's race last year and is now poised to be the first black woman elected attorney general in Massachusetts. Just what does that mean for her rise? You know, in in state politics. [00:10:35][26.7]

Yawu Miller: [00:10:37] It's pretty phenomenal that, you know, she's gone from a district city councilor to city council president to, you know, a viable statewide candidate in such a short period of time. She's done phenomenally well with fundraising from the beginning. You know, a lot of that, I think, comes because she, you know, went to an Ivy League, she went to Princeton and I think Georgetown Law. And, you know, she's able to attempt to tap into a very wealthy network of donors. You know, she's also enjoyed support from people who back charter schools. So she's had some some PAC money behind her. But, you know, also, she she presents really well on the campaign trail. Like her ideas make sense. And again, you know, the absence of of viable candidates coming from the GOP just has made this into much less of a nail biter than it may have been ten years ago. [00:11:38][61.4]

Jennifer Smith: [00:11:39] And you mentioned, of course, Anthony Amore, who's running for state auditor against state senator Diana DiZolglio. So The Boston Globe recently endorsed Anthony Amore for the post. You mentioned that he's a bit of an outlier when it comes to what the current member of a mass GOP candidate looks like. There's been a decent amount of back and forth over how they've kind of represented themselves throughout the campaign and whether or not it's consistent with the way that they have governed or behaved in the past. So walk us through a little bit of the back and forth. What's the takeaway from the Globe coverage of DiZoglio and Amore's track records? [00:12:17][38.2]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:12:19] Yeah, the Boston Globe had a great piece out this week that really dove into kind of what we've been hearing and what's kind of been levied against both of these candidates for a while now is that in reality, in the past, they've both said things and purported themselves to be more conservative than they appear to be now. Anthony Amore, as we've already said, is, you know, kind of the token moderate Republican in this election cycle of the statewide candidates. But he has voted for Trump and said things in the past, you know, that are more conservative on now deleted tweets that the Globe got access to and things like that. And Diana DiZoglio, you know, she's not considered never really has been considered the most progressive member of the legislature, either in the House or the Senate. And she's served in both. But, you know, in the past, she was considered and voted in a way that was more conservative. And The Globe story gets into that as well. And that does play a little bit. You know, regardless of her personal views, just with the district that she represents, you know, kind of up on the north shore of the Merrimack Valley and up on that New Hampshire border, where things are, you know, a little bit more red. [00:13:32][73.1]

Jennifer Smith: [00:13:33] And the last statewide office we probably want to touch on before everybody nods off, because these are going to sound very, very similar. Here is Bill Galvin versus Rayla Campbell running for secretary of state. Galvin is up 27 points, so actually even higher than most Democrats are polling right now. And there's also kind of the awkwardness of even inside the GOP people kind of needing to dance around some of the comments that Campbell has made. And so and of course, we've heard that even some Republicans have said, you know, just because of these comments, they actually are leaning toward Galvin. So Yawu, when you're thinking about the way that the political rhetoric has kind of heightened not just nationally but also in Massachusetts here, does it feel like people are seeking out a kind of more moderate option or are they just kind of stuck there because there's really kind of only one type of candidate that's running on the Republican side? [00:14:32][59.1]

Yawu Miller: [00:14:33] I'm really curious to see how Republican voters vote. We know that when Trump was on the ballot in 2020, 40% of Massachusetts voters voted for him. We don't know really how the I mean, Campbell's Rayla Campbell's rhetoric is as far to the right as you can get pretty much on. She's gone around the state saying that libraries have books with child pornography. She actually got called on that at one point where, you know, somebody told told the police officer she was distributing child pornography and she had to explain to the officers that the book was not actually child pornography. She's hitting like the most radical conservative Republican talking points. Is that going to, you know, to what extent might that resonate with with Republican voters? That's going to be really interesting to see. She's she might be like a bit of a bellwether for to what extent does Massachusetts have that that kind of voter, but to what extent have those ideas taken hold in Massachusetts? [00:15:39][66.2]

Jennifer Smith: [00:15:41] And so some of the more interesting races are weirdly not at that kind of statewide level. There is a number of district attorney races. We've been mostly focused on Suffolk County because of kind of the Arroyo and Hayden dustup, if we want to phrase it that way in the primary right now in Plymouth County, we're looking at incumbent Timothy Cruz facing a challenge from Jason Hall. Yawu, what are you watching in that race as this other piece with the kind of tensions we've seen between more progressive prosecutors and maybe a more traditional prosecutorial approach that's kind of popped up across the state. [00:16:20][39.2]

Yawu Miller: [00:16:21] My sense is Cruz has, you know, first of all, he's shied away from debates and there's been very little debate. There's not been actually a lot of news coverage of that race, which, you know, has enabled Cruz to not have to take, you know, strong positions. But what little we've seen of his positions, he he doesn't seem to be, you know, taking, you know, the kind of right extreme right wing stands that you're seeing from a lot of the GOP's an incumbent. You know, he's been in office for a while. So, you know, it's not this it's not of the same kind of, you know, kind of race that even we're seeing at the governor's level. I think, you know, it might be a bit of an uphill battle for for Hall in that, you know, the Plymouth County can easily go either way. You know, they they've they've elected a lot of Republicans and they've elected Democrats before. So, you know, that's that's an interesting one to watch. And it's also one, I think that, you know, sadly has been underreported, including by our newspaper. [00:17:23][61.9]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:17:25] Yeah. Yeah. There's a few races that could kind of go either way in these law enforcement races between sheriff and D.A. down in southeastern Massachusetts. And a lot of them, when they have gotten coverage, have been just overshadowed by the Bristol County Sheriff's race, which we talked about a little bit last week. So I want to pivot elsewhere, though. You know, what are other down ballot races to watch, you know, across the state that you have your eye on or here in Boston? [00:17:52][27.1]

Yawu Miller: [00:17:55] In Boston, Christopher Worrell, brother of the city councilor. Brian Worrell, you know, made the cut for the Democratic nomination for state rep in the 5th Suffolk district. He's running against Roy Owens, who's been on the ballot consistently over the last 20 or 30 years, has never won. But last year in a city council race, he came in second in the in a primary or preliminary race. So, I mean, that's one to watch. Just I mean, you know, sort of a curiosity factor. Roy Owens has taken stands that are actually very he doesn't necessarily run as a Republican, but he's taking stands that are very much like in keeping with the more radical elements of the Republican Party. His campaign literature makes wild statements and misrepresentations of his opponents. You know how much of a vote can he get in this race? And, you know, why are people are voting for him? What actually draws people to him is just his name having been on the ballot so many times or, you know, is there something about him that actually appeals to voters? [00:19:05][70.8]

Jennifer Smith: [00:19:07] And I think that brings us to the present question, which is turnout being a factor in a lot of these races? Rahsaan Hall pointed to the idea that there might be a bit more enthusiasm on the Democratic side, though of course, as we've talked about, that's a little bit relative this year, how enthusiastic people are. But, you know, kind of perennial candidates who nonetheless have a decent amount of name recognition, even if they're not representative necessarily, of what their constituents might want do better in low turnout races. Bill Galvin has said that we are likely to see less turnout because people are not really jazzed up about this kind of slate of candidates. So on the local level, Yawu, what are you keeping an eye on in terms of turnout? [00:19:53][45.9]

Yawu Miller: [00:19:55] I guess at the local level, I have not seen any indicators. I don't know what the early voting numbers look like locally. There's just, you know, we're kind of flying blind here. Yard signs are knowing they are no real reliable indication. So, you know, we've got nothing to go on here. Hopefully voters are enthusiastic about Campbell. Andrea Campbell. Not necessarily really, Campbell, but Andrea Campbell, you know, she's local. She ran for mayor. So people, you know, across the city have seen her. We're just again, we don't want to see Massachusetts slip into, you know, low turnout like statewide races. It would be a travesty for democracy here. [00:20:41][45.9]

Jennifer Smith: [00:20:43] And I think the last thing that we want to touch on is maybe the first thing actually that you mentioned, which is that one of the few places we've been seeing any kind of energy is around the ballot measures. So what are you seeing out there in terms of kind of standouts, union presence, folks getting out to kind of civics or other local meetings? What did the ballot measure ground games look like to you? [00:21:07][24.0]

Yawu Miller: [00:21:08] One in four are really strong. They're backed by unions. Last Saturday at the Nubian Square in front of the bowling building, Andrea Campbell and gubernatorial candidate Maura Healey were out in support of those ballot questions. So people are really not taking anything for granted. Those both those ballot questions have consistently polled with the majority of Massachusetts voters in favor. But again, they're not taking anything for granted. They're, you know, real strong pushing in support of those ballot questions, two and three with the liquor stores and the dental insurance. Much less interest and much less energy behind those. But I think the, you know, millionaire's tax and driver's licenses for, you know, undocumented immigrants are sort of the progressive arm of Massachusetts flexing its muscle. [00:22:07][58.7]

Jennifer Smith: [00:22:08] All right. Well, that is all the time we have for today. Yawu Miller of the Bay State Banner, thank you so much for joining us on this final rundown before E Day. [00:22:16][8.2]

Yawu Miller: [00:22:17] Pleasure to be here. [00:22:18][0.5]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:22:25] Elon Musk has officially acquired Twitter and changes are already underway, leaving us pretty confused about the future of the app that a lot of us rely on. So here to talk to us about some research into how awesome Massachusetts used Twitter will get into the actual pronunciation of the hashtag in a bit. And what the future of the Bird app may hold is. Chris Oates of Legislator. Welcome to The Horse Race, Chris. [00:22:52][27.6]

Chris Oates: [00:22:53] Thank you very much. Longtime listener, first time guest, I guess. [00:22:56][3.0]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:22:57] Well, we love it. So let's start. Let's start with the hashtag. Let's just get right into it. How do you pronounce the hashtag that we use for Massachusetts politics? [00:23:06][9.4]

Chris Oates: [00:23:07] I say #mapoli and #bospoli. [00:23:08][0.5]

Jennifer Smith: [00:23:11] I mean, I got to say that that's respecting the poll that Steve Casella conducted, and that already starts you off in a strong position of favorability here. Let's go for a harder question existentially. Why Twitter? Why are we all on Twitter? It seems to be kind of the social media center of the political and media world, but who's actually on it in Massachusetts? [00:23:33][22.1]

Chris Oates: [00:23:35] So I think the reason why Twitter took off in a way that certain other ones didn't is just the need for concision and the ability to scroll through a lot of different pieces of information at once. So the you know, for example, if if Joe Manchin puts out a press release saying, I am in favor of D.C. statehood, it would be 500 words. And while those words may be very well written, you don't need to read all of them to get the point. A tweet that says Manchin supports DC statehood gets the message across. And if you're an elected official on the go, especially if you're a journalist trying to keep track of lots of different stories, it's easy to scroll through a user curated timeline of what actually matters to you. I mean, that's how I got on Twitter. I was a political analyst covering the U.S., Canada and Australia and New Zealand at a job. So I couldn't just, you know, read the Boston Globe as great to paper it is. I also needed to read the Sydney Morning Herald or whatever the New Zealand paper was. And I think that's why folks in politics like it. Whatever your set unique set of interests are, you can curate a timeline that that gets that on Twitter. And then in terms of who uses it in Massachusetts, it seems to be very much dominated by elected officials at the state level, journalists and other activists. But it's not necessarily representative of the whole population at large. And many of who we might think of as the power users of Twitter are also not representative. But it is a really functional, I think, space. It's just we shouldn't confuse this. You know, when scrolling through tweets, oh, well, this is a representative poll of what the people of Massachusetts think. [00:25:09][94.0]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:25:10] So you've done a lot of research, a lot of very good research into how people use Twitter here, who is using Twitter here and what the overlap is between all of these different users, you know, particularly at the state house, a little bit at the city. Talk to us about what you've seen in your latest research. [00:25:28][17.7]

Chris Oates: [00:25:29] So we have I mean, we got into this research because our company is an information platform for for politics and policy. So we wanted to see how are they using the current main platform? I should mention we're not trying to go up against Twitter. We're going for a much smaller niche, but we want to know like how are people using Twitter so we can find kind of a gap to complement? So we started going into this and we've been tracking, you know, who's tweeting on a daily basis and also kind of some on a longer sense. And at the state House, it's pretty active. But it's important to note not everyone is on Twitter. So there are 170 legislators with accounts on Twitter. There are some vacancies, so it's not a full one, 70 out of 200, but it's still not everyone and not everyone's tweeting that frequently. So since October 1st, only 122 accounts have tweeted anything at all. So, you know, a little over half of the state house is tweeting at least once a month, but that doesn't mean it's an ongoing newsfeed. There are certain people who tweet much more in when it comes to tweeting with the hashtag mapping as a just a proxy for who's tweeting about the state. There's a lot of folks that do that. So I just ran some numbers last night and people who have tweeted #mapoli just in the last week and a half, there were 7700 tweets just in the last week and a half. But most of the people who tweet them only do one. So the median person only had one tweet in the last week and a half hashtag mapelli, meaning that a lot of folks tweet, you know, a lot, multiple times a day. Lisa, you're up there as one of the #mapoli hashtag power users, other journalists as well. But there are a lot of folks out there who just have, you know, something came across their mind. They were just a regular citizen. They don't have a ton of followers. But something came across their mind about politics and they tweet, you know, this is bad hashtag #mapoli or this is good hashtag #mapoli. So I would say is kind of there. It is used as a kind of a press release distribution channel for elected officials. It's also used as basically a WhatsApp group for political journalists, and then it's also used as a way for constituents to register their complaints. And even if that doesn't happen a lot, it's still a valuable channel. [00:27:36][126.7]

Jennifer Smith: [00:27:38] Getting exactly to that point kind of the the diverse purposes or uses of Twitter here. The question I think a lot of us always have is, are we just talking to ourselves here or is anyone else kind of breaking in? How useful is this as kind of a tea leaf reading tool? Does the power user base end up basically warping the impression that someone who might pop into the map, Ali hashtag might have when it's kind of just coming to. Well, what do people think about Massachusetts politics? An easy one here to look out might be, for instance, kind of anti GOP or anti Baker animus that's more prevalent on Twitter. And then it turns out that, you know, the governor is wildly popular when it comes to voters. So. Walk us through that warping effect here. [00:28:25][47.6]

Chris Oates: [00:28:26] Yes. So we obviously can't survey every user about who they support. But what we can do is see who they follow. And this is one of the nice things about Twitter and why why we've done so much research on it. It's actually just very easy to get a lot of public information because most of it is public. So we can see who the #mapoli power users follow. And when we did this research, we did this last year, but I think it's still ready, still relevant. The most followed person was Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Now, if you look at the top ten, Ayanna Pressley was up there. Senator Warren, both of her account, Senator Markey. I mean, obviously makes sense. They're very popular online. But I think it does show that this is a a Democratic user base, more than conservative, at least in Massachusetts and probably on the left of the Democratic Party. So, I mean, obviously, totally great that people who are on the left of the Democratic Party are making their voices heard. But it does mean that if you just scroll through the map of the hashtag, be aware you're getting a sense of a part of the Democratic Party more than you are the full party and more than the full number of people in the Commonwealth. So it's not necessarily good for that, but it can be good for is as a reader of elected officials because one of the nice things at the state level we don't do it as much, but at the federal level we do. You know, most candidates will put their messages out on Twitter and then you can look at all of them. You can scrape them, get a sense of what the party is saying or what a state is saying in a way that you otherwise couldn't if you just sat at home watching campaign ads or trying to read the news and like take everything down and then do some data analysis. It's very easy to do big data analysis on Twitter and of elected officials in a way that you can't really do otherwise. And so it's valuable, even if it doesn't fully reflect real life. [00:30:09][102.8]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:30:10] Yeah. It's interesting that a lot of Republicans in Massachusetts, at least from what I see, still tend to be on Facebook and tend to have their biggest followings and really have their conversations with people on Facebook. So it's very interesting how this is splintered. And I'm curious if you think given Twitter's new ownership and the changes that are happening, if we might see that change a little bit on Twitter, if you might see, you know, some kind of different voices coming in to, you know, what is a little bit more of a Democratic microcosm right now. [00:30:43][32.6]

Chris Oates: [00:30:44] I think there's definitely yeah. The chance of that I probably a likelihood of that with Elon Musk's new ownership in his relatively newfound political leanings. I think the question though is to what extent is Twitter valuable for the regular person on it, tweeting their opinion, and to what extent is a valuable for the elected officials who are on it? Because if you were in Massachusetts, you want to know what's going on at the state. If the app becomes more conservative, but it simultaneously becomes less functional, you might lose some of the voices either of journalists or elected officials who you know, whose voice you really want to hear. And I think this is a weird thing about not just Twitter, but social media in general, is that to a certain extent, what you're really there for it to be, most people, is an audience. Most tweets are sent by a small fraction of people. And this is not just on on Twitter, but, you know, on Facebook. A lot of posts sent by a small minority. Instagram Tik Tok is especially blatant in this where, you know, you basically just sit there and you scroll through other people's content, unlike how it was supposed to be, which is you share your own updates, your friends sharing their updates. So I think that to me is a real question with what Elon Musk does with it. Does he break the app to the extent where it's no longer useful as that effectively a real time newswire of what our elected official officials are saying. [00:32:02][77.8]

Jennifer Smith: [00:32:04] And to the question of what it might be that could drive people away. You're talking about it mostly in terms of functionality rather than, for instance, political leanings in general. It's been much bandied about over the past few months, this idea that, like, you know, liberals saying I'm going to leave Twitter is like saying I'm going to leave the country if Donald Trump wins. My take on that is it's so much easier to turn off a social media platform than it is to sell your house and move to Canada. But, you know, to what extent are you watching departure for ideological reasons as opposed to functionality reasons? [00:32:37][32.4]

Chris Oates: [00:32:38] I think they'd be both. I think at the state level, you're much more likely to see it for ideological reasons. I think it's hard for a member of Congress to be off of any social media app. I think many of them just see it as part of their job. But if you're a state representative who's only tweeting, you know, once a month anyway, come to my event and, you know, you might have a larger audience on Facebook less. We should remember that Twitter does not actually have a very large user base in the world of social media. Facebook is far larger than it. So is Instagram. Tik Tok is expanding and many people are now using WhatsApp or Telegram or Discord as their social media. So I think it's easy to see state reps leave. I think you won't see members of Congress or very likely journalists leave until you start to see that functionality are breaking. Or he does something like he you know, he's charging people $8 a month for a verified checkmark and people don't want to do that. And then they realize that their tweets aren't getting the engagement cause they're no longer priorities. Or just this morning he might pay for videos. And there's certain sectors of the Internet that have paid videos that advertisers don't want to be next to. And so you might see those kind of things happening. I think that will be a longer term thing. I think what you'd like more likely see is a general decay and decline of the app as as a kind of a town square. [00:33:53][75.7]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:33:56] So if it comes to it, you know, you've rattled off a bunch of different other social media platforms. What is the alternative? What are the alternatives? [00:34:04][8.6]

Chris Oates: [00:34:06] Well, if it's for sharing press releases, I'm obviously going to say Legislata because that's one thing we're just introducing, but that is that is a niche. And I do want to say, this is where our audience are, folks professionally in the political ecosystem. It's not for the average person. So if I were an elected official now and I recently spoke to some elected officials about social media, I would be on every single platform because that's where the people are. If you're trying to reach your constituents, you could be on Facebook. Tick Tok, it's complicated because of national security implications, but Facebook. Instagram, certainly. Tick Tok. If the US if the Biden administration says it's okay or if it's on a secure phone, I would be on Reddit posting there. I would be, you know, setting up my own perhaps Discord Channel for constituents to write in. And maybe what we're seeing in in Russia and Eastern Europe is Telegram is becoming very popular. I think Whatsapp is likely going to clone features, he might want to be on that, but I would be trying to get my message out on every single platform possible because we're no longer in the era where you can just send out a press release to a group of reporters who are sitting in the newsroom and then hope that it's in the newspapers the next day that everyone's reading. I think we're now in a place where the audience is already fragmented and elected officials have to go chase that audience wherever it is. [00:35:22][76.2]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:35:24] Well, I'm sure that we're going to have plenty to revisit about this in the next weeks and months, but that is all the time we have right now. Chris of Legislata, thanks so much for joining us today. [00:35:33][9.2]

Chris Oates: [00:35:34] Thank you very much. And I look forward to not paying $8 a month for a Twitter blue check. [00:35:37][3.1]

Jennifer Smith: [00:35:41] And that brings us to the end of our show, which, I don't know, maybe we're tired, maybe we're hungry. A nap might solve one of these things, but I don't think we are in for quite the level of food service that the Arlington poll workers are going to be in for on E day next week. Lisa, did you see the size of the sandwich they will be receiving? [00:36:02][21.1]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:36:02] 200 feet. Really? Like, is that real? [00:36:05][2.2]

Jennifer Smith: [00:36:06] 200? Apparently. I don't know. I trust the good folks over at WHDH are reporting that local Arlington Deli D'Agostino will be delivering a 200 foot sub for lunch on pole day while raising money for charity. That is so lovely. [00:36:21][15.2]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:36:21] That's actually really nice for people who are going to be working for like 12 plus hours straight at the polls and dealing with who knows what with that. But I just want to know like how many sub like subs are usually cut. So like how many pieces does a 200 foot sub cut into? How many people can it actually feed? [00:36:43][22.5]

Jennifer Smith: [00:36:45] Oh, my gosh. I don't I don't know. I'm I'm thinking like, what is the the ratio of of the proper size of a sandwich? Is it a six inch sub? In which case we're looking at 400 of these things. Oh, no. I hope my AP stats teacher is not listening to this. I don't know if my math is good on that, but I don't know. Or do they make all of these poll workers participate and a long sandwich Lady and the Tramp like charade, where you just slowly eat toward each other and then either die of an exploded stomach or make it at the end of the day. [00:37:17][32.5]

Lisa Kashinsky: [00:37:18] Can I say that sounds like a recipe for some sort of COVID, RSV, something like that. I don't know if we're allowed to Lady and the Tramp things anymore with a bunch of like unrelated people who we don't know where they're from. [00:37:29][11.8]

Jennifer Smith: [00:37:30] But I mean, look, that is just a devastating place to leave it. No more lady in the tramping, but yes, giant sandwiches for the good folks in Arlington, not for the good folks at the horse race. I don't know, Lisa. I feel like that's a little bit of an injustice, but that is all the time we have for today. I am Jennifer Smith signing off with Lisa Kashinsky. Our producer is Elena Eberwein. Don't forget to give the horse race a review. Wherever you're hearing us now to help other people find us, subscribe to the Massachusetts Politico Playbook and reach out to the MassINC Polling Group if you need any polls done. Thank you all for listening. See you next week. Happy voting. [00:37:30][0.0]

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