The Digitally Accountable Public Representation Database: Measuring Online Communication by Federal, State, and Local Officials

We introduce the Digitally Accountable Public Representation (DAPR) Database, an innovative archive that systematically tracks and analyzes the online communications of federal, state, and local officials in the U.S. Focusing on X/Twitter and Facebook, the current database includes 28,980 public officials, their demographic information, and 5,769,904 Tweets along with 450,972 Facebook posts, dating from January 2020 to September 2024, offering a rich historical perspective on digital political discourse by elected officials in the states. Along with the raw data, we develop and include key measures that quantify relevant features of online communications. These include specialized measures of misinformation dissemination, the use of toxic language by officials, and the expression of anti-vaccination attitudes using large language models (LLMs) and other machine learning techniques. In addition to presenting and describing the contents of the DAPR database, we provide an interactive digital dashboard, designed for a broader audience to explore the data in a user-friendly online environment. Lastly, we describe our model for expanding and sustaining the DAPR database, including the addition of new officials and platforms.