  Elected officials have privileged roles in public communication. In contrast
to national politicians, whose posting content is more likely to be closely
scrutinized by a robust ecosystem of nationally focused media outlets,
sub-national politicians are more likely to openly disseminate harmful content
with limited media scrutiny. In this paper, we analyze the factors that explain
the online visibility of over 6.5K unique state legislators in the US and how
their visibility might be impacted by posting low-credibility or uncivil
content. We conducted a study of posting on Twitter and Facebook (FB) during
2020-21 to analyze how legislators engage with users on these platforms. The
results indicate that distributing content with low-credibility information
attracts greater attention from users on FB and Twitter for Republicans.
Conversely, posting content that is considered uncivil on Twitter receives less
attention. A noticeable scarcity of posts containing uncivil content was
observed on FB, which may be attributed to the different communication patterns
of legislators on these platforms. In most cases, the effect is more pronounced
among the most ideologically extreme legislators. Our research explores the
influence exerted by state legislators on online political conversations, with
Twitter and FB serving as case studies. Furthermore, it sheds light on the
differences in the conduct of political actors on these platforms. This study
contributes to a better understanding of the role that political figures play
in shaping online political discourse.
