@Equality: Twitter as an LGBT Interest Group Lobbying Tool.

The promise of social media in American politics has been democratization and equality of access, but there is little research into how social media is used to advocate for policy preferences. Morality politics and interest group theories provide a framework for this study which examines the use of 'insider' social media lobbying tactics by state LGBT interest groups. Using content and regression analyses, data collected from the Twitter output of fifty-nine state-level LGBT interest groups for the period January-May 2015 suggest that direct or 'insider' lobbying accounts for only a small portion of LGBT interest group social media activity; and, variation in the use of such tactics can best be explained by state partisanship, partisan competition, and the distributions of citizen and elite values -- not by institutional or environmental factors. This study also highlights a discrepancy in social media tactics within the LGBT movement, as the most significant source of variation appears to be a transgender-specific organizational mission. Finally, this study contradicts the idea that social media provides equality of access as interest groups with more resources are more likely to directly contact elected officials via social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]