For years, Massachusetts had one of the most active state political universes on Twitter. Times – and the social media landscape – have changed.
Legislative usage is down, usage of the centralizing #mapoli hashtag is down, and engagement is generally down, though the rebranded “X” remains the site where most local journalists, organizers, and politicians are still hanging around. But it isn’t the same as it was, said guests at a live joint podcast recording of The Codcast and The Horse Race on Monday.
“The best way I can describe the evolution of the Massachusetts political ecosystem is #mapoli started as a bunch of operatives from different elected officials’ offices, a bunch of political journalists, and a bunch of people who cared about politics as like a hobby or an advocacy perspective, sitting around like a cafeteria table in the Ashburton lunchroom,” said Alex Goldstein, CEO of 90 West communications, of his time online working for Gov. Deval Patrick.
Then, he said, it felt like a political picnic on the Common. Then, it turned.
“I would think about Twitter right now as if you’re at a bar near the State House and you recognize a few people, but every time you open your mouth, a bunch of people from Texas, Arizona, Moscow, Canada come pouring out of their basement into the bar and try to punch you in the face,” Goldstein said.
The Twitter departure can be difficult to measure. Prominent Massachusetts politicians like Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and Senate President Karen Spilka announced they would leave the site in their personal capacities in the last year, citing toxicity amplified by owner Elon Musk, with Spilka’s office and the Massachusetts Senate accounts departing the site in favor of Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and LinkedIn. Wu now posts rarely, and exclusively, in a political capacity.
News organizations, including NPR and one of its local affiliates, WBUR, left the site last April when the site inaccurately labeled the news organizations “state-affiliated media.” But many individual journalists remain, as do organizations like NPR-affiliate GBH News and politicians using the site as an extension of their press release system.
“I am there for now, in part, because if so many people still reflexively open up their phone when they get up in the morning and go to the Twitter app and scroll through it, at least I can put some stuff there that I know is true, that I know reflects what maybe you’re looking for and don’t know another way to find about your state government,” GBH’s State House reporter Katie Lannan said on the podcast. “And when you do figure out another way to find it, let me know and I’ll come hang out there too.”
Massachusetts political tweets just over the last budget cycle dropped by about a third, and coming from about a third fewer accounts, said Chris Oates, CEO of legislative policy platform Legislata. While there was still some “energy” on the site in 2020 and 2021, partly because it was a means to communicate during the isolation of the pandemic, by 2022 the drop off was starting.
“So at a time when politics was happening way more, political Twitter over that year and a half or two years had really atrophied and died,” Oates said. “And I think an important thing to note is Elon Musk is like 70 percent of the story, but the decline had already started.”
Alternative social media sites like Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads are something of a mixed bag, with many active users posting similarly across the sites to maintain a presence and hedge their bets if one of them really takes off.
Dan Kennedy, in evaluating the Twitter alternatives, writes at Media Nation that he’s enjoying the newly open-to-all Bluesky for now, but predicts “we will never go back to the days when there was one platform where everyone gathered, for better or worse.”
State Auditor Diana DiZoglio, now an “elder millennial” said in her first run for state representative, ousting incumbent State Rep. David Torrisi in 2012, “it seemed to be incredibly useful. At the time I was running against a 14-year incumbent and he was very well connected in the community. I was a newcomer at the time, running for office back then while I was knocking on doors nonstop. And that was a tool. Social media was also a huge tool then.”
In the years since, it has transitioned more into a way to share her activity in office – or occasionally a picture of her using an old-school lawn mower – and handled more by staff. As an informational tool, its usefulness has also dwindled for DiZoglio as the social media landscape fragments.
“It used to kind of feel like it was an additional opportunity to post on social media to get outreach to folks that you wanted to be connected with, but now it feels like it’s a necessity,” she said. “You wanna make sure that you’re utilizing every way possible to allow people access to you, access to your office, and to make sure that you’re putting information out there that people might need. It sort of feels like an office responsibility.”
Kristen Halbert, senior associate with Black Lion Strategies, said the site has always been a complicated tool, but not one she’s ready to give up on. Particularly for communities of color, young people, and activists, the site was a digital “third space” in an era when physical spaces to gather in are disappearing or changing.
“Communities and these talkbacks and things still exist on this site,” she said. “A huge amount of activists and people that I care about have left and gone on to other forms of communication, but a couple of them are staying, and they are trying and they are fighting back. And I know that they are fighting for a time when perhaps Twitter can go back to being what it was for all of us. So as long as they’re gonna stay there and fight, I’m gonna stay there and read.”