By Sally Burkley
Faculty mentor: Dr. Stephen Farnsworth
10:00-10:50am, HCC 327
National media coverage of individual Congressional members is generally sparse. The House and Senate are covered as a whole or via chamber’s leadership rather than articles about individual members and their interests. Therefore, if a congressional member wishes to be heard they generally need to band together with other likeminded lawmakers to gain attention. But not Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Known to many as AOC, this new representative of New York’s District 14 has captured the eyes of the media and the hearts of supporters across the United States of America. According to YouGovAmerica surveys in 2021, 84% of Americans report knowing of her and she is the 15th most popular politician in the United States with no House of Representative members ahead of her. While the initial thought to explain AOC’s mass media coverage is the 2018 Year of the Woman, which represents a mass increase in women elected to Congress, she still received far more than other women who were elected. In my research, I cover who AOC is, her campaign style, why she is different from past candidates, how she utilizes social media while in office, and how the mass media covers her actions. By doing this I uncover how she garnered the attention of national media organizations through her novel savvy social media use, intersectionality, and locality.
