The ProPublica Congress API includes information about the social media of Congress members. This tool takes advantage of that to generate focused Google queries for a members’ social media space. Specifically it will generate Google queries that will search across:
– The member’s Facebook posts
– The member’s Facebook photos
– The member’s Facebook videos
– The member’s Twitter posts
In addition, a link is created that shows the member’s most recent YouTube videos. (They are not searched by keyword.)
Please note: Not all members participate(d) on all social media platforms. This is especially true for earlier sessions of Congress. In addition, while testing this I saw at least one instance of a one-term congressman’s Twitter handle being taken over by someone else. When it doubt, check the handles against the Wayback Machine (Adding a link to make that easy is on my to-do list.)
Want to know more about how this tool works? Check out the ResearchBuzz article!
Choose the state for which you want a member list, whether you want the Senate or the House of Representatives, and for which congress you want a list (Congresses 112 through 117 are available.)
You’ll need an API Key to use this tool. You can get them free from https://www.propublica.org/datastore/api/propublica-congress-api .
IMPORTANT: After you click this it may take a few seconds for the results to appear. The program is both pulling members from the state you requested and building URLs..
