Presidential and Gubernatorial Tweets Involving Military Service members and Veterans

Abstract: The military consistently ranks as one of the most highly favorable occupations in the United States (US). However, fewer and fewer people have contact with military veterans than in the past, a trend that is expected to continue. Since military veterans carry such high levels of favorability but continue to lose contact with society, a content analysis of 1,976 tweets from former president Donald Trump and US governors was conducted to understand how military veterans were represented in the political arena on Twitter. Tweets were pulled between January 20, 2017 and November 26, 2019. Results indicated nearly all tweets about military veterans were positive and that Republicans tweeted twice as often about veterans as Democrats did. The topics of the tweets were mostly heroism (50.8%) followed by legislative or political agendas (45.5%). Republicans also provided more quotes from veterans than Democrats did, but Republicans did not use that contact to reduce stigma surrounding mental health.