Understanding the Usage of Polarizing Rhetoric in the X Posts Sent by American Senators in 2023: A Directed Content Analysis

Political polarization has been gradually increasing, particularly among political elites like politicians, in a process known as elite polarization that has been linked to numerous undesirable political phenomena like political disunity, legislative gridlock, public disengagement with the political system, and ineffective policy making. Political elites engage in polarizing behavior through their social media messaging, politically their communications on X, formerly Twitter. One of the most concerning types of this polarizing behavior is the usage of polarizing rhetoric, or language meant to draw distinctions between group identities in order to affirm one message while subverting another. Research has already been done on the usage of polarizing rhetoric in the X posts, formerly tweets, of all members of Congress. However, research has yet to be done on the usage of polarizing rhetoric in the X posts of senators specifically, as well as on whether political party affects this usage. This paper uses a directed content analysis to study this topic, and finds that polarizing rhetoric is used to a very limited extent in the X posts of senators in 2023, and that the political party of senators has no statistically significant impact on their likelihood of using polarizing rhetoric in their X posts. This has implications for the structure of the House of Representatives and its proceedings, voter advocacy for bipartisan activity, and the current understanding of differences in polarization between the House and the Senate.