Parlamentares, representação política e redes sociais digitais: perfis de uso do Twitter na Câmara dos Deputados

The article reflects on how members of the Brazilian House of Representatives use Twitter as part of their political communications strategy. We examine all the 463 official accounts registered on Twitter in order to understand the factors that lead legislators to invest in microblogging. Such accounts were weekly monitored (between February and July 2012) by using the statistical software "R". The results points out correlations between the use of Twitter and attributes like age and occupation of leadership positions.