Table 2.
Sample Words and Posts for Latent Dirichlet Allocation Topics and Mean Percent Topic Representation Among State Legislators' Posts By Party
| Thematic meaning | Top words | Sample post | Mean percent topic representation among Democrat postsa | Mean percent topic representation among Republican postsa |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Topics significantly more prevalent among Republican postsb | ||||
| Drug trade | Fentanyl, drugs, trafficking, law enforcement, illegal | “Illegal border crossings are set to pass 1 million this year. Smugglers are profiting from trafficking drugs that are contributing to the opioid crisis. Border security is not a "talking point" - it's a matter of national security.” | 3.4% | 5.4% |
| Legislative work | House, committee, legislation, session, bills | “I am thrilled to announce that my legislation …has been signed into law as I included it on Senate Bill 514. This new bipartisan group will include members from both parties in the House and Senate…” | 4.3% | 5.3% |
| Local initiatives involving police | County, district, police, local, chief | “Yesterday, at the Town of Montgomery Police Department, the senator and I presented a check to a community coalition's opioid outreach efforts. Here's how the program works: Any person struggling with addiction can walk into a participating police department and ask for help, and a trained "Angel volunteer will be called to the station to help that person find treatment…” | 4.3% | 5.1% |
| Topics significantly more prevalent among Democrat postsb | ||||
| Pharmaceutical company accountability | Companies, accountable, attorney general, fight, manufacturers | “If you contributed to the problem, you should contribute to the solution. Our bill will make sure companies are held accountable for their part in the opioid crisis, and it will fund treatment and prevention programs to keep our communities safe.” | 6.6% | 3.9% |
| Treatment and recovery | Treatment, addiction, recovery, services, access | “Indiana's Next Level Recovery campaign helps people find reputable addiction treatment, both inpatient, outpatient, residential and opioid treatment programs.” | 6.1% | 4.3% |
| Medical marijuana for alternative pain treatment | Pain, medical marijuana, cannabis, study, patients | “IAGovernor Reynold’s Iowa Medical Cannabidiol Adv Board rejects patient petitions to help PTSD and opioid dependent patients gain access to medical cannabis. Big Pharma loves our Governor and this board!” | 4.9% | 4.1% |
| Overdose deaths and reversal | Overdose, deaths, naloxone, Narcan, people |
“Naloxone is an essential tool for first responders to combat the opioid epidemic. We successfully added ambulance services to the list of entities that are able to purchase naloxone. Now our first responders will be better equipped to fight the crisis on the front lines.” “ |
5.9% | 5.2% |
| Funding | Budget, million, funding, tax, increase | “It's imperative we take action against the #heroin & drug epidemic, which is why we've increased funding by $12M.” | 4.5% | 4.1% |
| Impact on families and communities | Communities, families, crisis, addiction, combat | “Today I participated in the @childhoodleague #annualconference2019 to learn how the opioid crisis affects our kids, families and entire community. Thank you for this wonderful program and all you do to transform challenging starts into unstoppable futures!” | 6.4% | 6.3% |
| Topics not significantly more prevalent among either parties’ postsb | ||||
| Forums and town halls | Forum, event, county, join, awareness | “I’d like to remind you that you are invited to my public forum on heroin and opioid addiction to take place with area law enforcement, health care professionals and drug and addiction specialists... We will discuss ways to work together to combat the epidemic.” | 5.9% | 6.3% |
| Opioid prescribing practices | Prescription, abuse, prescribing, medical, patients | “To help curb the number of unnecessary opioid prescriptions, anyone applying for or renewing their license to prescribe controlled substances will now take additional training courses under a new state law.” | 4.1% | 4.8% |
| Prescription drug takeback programs | Prescription drug, take back, national, unused, abuse | “It will take dedicated partners at every level to reverse the statistics and save lives. We can all start by taking some time today to clean out our medicine cabinets and safely dispose of our unused prescription drugs to keep them off our streets. Click the link below to find a drug drop box near you.” | 3.8% | 4.5% |
| Children and education | School, children, students, education, program | “We need to do all that we can to equip our schools and empower them to keep students safe. #opioids” | 3.5% | 3.8% |
a“Mean percent topic representation” defined as the average topic representation per social media post (normalized such that the total topic distribution for each social media post sums to 100%) across all social media posts for the given party
bSignificance defined by Wilcoxon signed-rank test P<0.001 with Bonferroni correction (P<5 × 10-5)