Freshman New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — whose lively Twitter feed already has attracted more than 2.4 million followers — will share her secrets to social media success with colleagues, a new report said Wednesday.
The House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee will host a session Thursday morning with AOC and Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut — who has 76,500 followers — “on the most effective ways to engage constituents on Twitter and the importance of digital storytelling,” USA Today reported.
Recent Congressional hearings with the leaders of Facebook and Google revealed that some older lawmakers were not exactly familiar with how the popular platforms worked.
“The older generation of members and senators is pretty clueless on the social media platforms. It’s pretty clear that a lot of members have 25-year-olds in their offices” running their social media, Himes told the paper.
“For younger members, they think of social media as every bit of an established form of communication as print or television or radio,” said Josh Hawley, who, at 39, is the youngest senator.
The decision to invite Ocasio-Cortez to share her expertise highlights her party’s effort to highlight younger member’s voices.
“Alexandria has very quickly built a national progressive following,” Himes said, while describing his own smaller following as “more typical of most members.”
But both lawmakers will have useful insight for colleagues, he said.
People have “a real hunger for calling it like it is,” Himes said. “For kind of opening the kimono on personal details. Are you a person? I think a lot of people believe politicians are manicured.”
Ocasio-Cortez in one memorable post on Twitter included a video of her dancing into her office along with Edwin Starr’s anti-war classic “War.”
That video was in response to a post from a conservative critic who posted a video of her dancing in college in an artless attempt to make her look unserious.



