Rally 'round the mask: Congressional social media images and masking during COVID-19

Abstract

During national crises, political elites often rally around the flag, promoting a central message to restore unity and calm the public. COVID-19 provided such a crisis. But did elites rally? The pandemic occurred at a point of extreme polarization in the United States, which threatens the potential for a rally. In this article, we argue that messaging about masking during COVID-19 offers an opportunity to test the comparative effects of a rally versus polarization. To do so, we use a unique measure: visual public communication by members of Congress (MOCs). We extract 340,000 images from congressional Twitter and Facebook accounts and employ supervised machine-learning methods to identify when MOCs posted images of people wearing masks. We find evidence of both rally effects and polarization. Trump’s actions are especially important: while Trump-loyal Republicans are less likely to post masks, all Republicans increased posting masks after Trump first appeared wearing a face mask.