Primary Submission Category: Mental health/function
Partisan Differences in State Legislator Tweets about Suicide: A Content Analysis
Authors: Michal Weiss, Madison Kitchen, Andrew Riblet, Jonathan Purtle,
Presenting Author: Michal Weiss*
Textual artifacts of policymakers’ public communication reflect their knowledge and attitudes about issues and can also shape public opinion. To inform strategies to dissemination evidence about suicide to policymakers, this study aimed to characterize how state legislators communicate about suicide on X (formerly twitter).
We established search terms and used Quorum, a public affairs database, to identify all state legislator tweets about suicide between December 1, 2023, and November 30, 2024. We developed a codebook, established inter-rater reliability, and used thematic content analysis to characterize the extent to which, and how, policymakers communicate about the causes, solutions, and consequences of suicide. Analyses examined frequencies of themes for all legislators and stratified by political party affiliation.
Of 1,049 tweets identified, 996 were included in coding. Tweets about physician-assisted suicide (8.8%) and war/terrorism (1.8%) were excluded from the primary analyses. About one-third (36.7%) of tweets mentioned causes of suicide, 65.9% mentioned solutions, and 1.4% mentioned consequences. Chi-square tests assessed differences in themes between Democrats (n=567) and Republicans (n=268). Democratic legislators were significantly more likely than Republicans to mention lethal means (e.g., firearms) as cause of suicide (35.1% vs. 17.4% p=<0.001). Democrats were also significantly more likely than Republicans to mention any solution to prevent suicide (77.9% vs. 44.0%, p=<0.001). This remained true of all specific solutions coded, except for clinical services (7.9% vs. 4.5%, p=0.07).
Study results highlight a need to improve the communication of evidence about policy strategies to prevent suicide to state legislators and also suggest a need to tailor messages based on political party affiliation. Further, results indicate that there may be bi-partisan support for suicide prevention strategies that involve clinical services.