Social media has become a vital tool for policymakers to engage with constituents and stakeholders on pertinent issues.
A key public health issue is firearm violence, a leading cause of death and injury among the general population and the leading cause of death for children and adolescents. Political discourse on firearm violence is highly polarized and partisan, resulting in divergent views on how to address the problem.
In a recent JMIR Formative Research article, former LDI Associate Fellow Vivek Ashok, now an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, and LDI Senior Fellows Therese Richmond, Matthew Kearney, and Zachary Meisel sought to characterize policymakers’ posts on firearm violence to better understand how they might inform agenda-setting and public perception.