54,000 social media posts.
The sheer number might be intimidating, but the potential insights that this content could provide on political rhetoric is what kept Christian Pereira ’27 invested in compiling an original database of online posts. A dual major in Politics and Law and Finance, Pereira is researching the dynamics of legislative-executive relations and how elite political communication through social media shapes institutional behavior.
“Voting in Congress affects every aspect of our lives, whether we notice it or not. Being able to see what really affects how Congress votes is important,” says Pereira, whose research is funded through a Bryant University Undergraduate Research Grant.
Working under the guidance of Assistant Professor of Political Science Tristan Hightower, Ph.D., Pereira’s study expands on his term paper from Hightower’s “The U.S. Congress” course this past spring. His curiosity about the legislative process extended beyond the classroom and into the real world when he interned with Congressman Gabe Amo — an experience that added another dimension to his academic pursuits.
“Being able to see the inner workings of a district congressional office was great,” says Pereira, who created event briefs for Amo and fielded constituent phone calls where he connected them with caseworkers. “Being able to support individuals and being a voice of comfort to get them what they needed was extremely rewarding.”
When he wasn’t at Amo’s office this summer, Pereira was on campus conducting research: collecting data on congressional activity over an eight-year period, running sentiment analysis in R (a programming language for statistical computing and data visualization) to assess the emotional tone of political messages, and testing AI-based tools for topic modeling and content classification. He also applied advanced statistical techniques, such as logistic regression models, to analyze patterns in political behavior.
“My favorite part has been reinforcing what has been taught in the political science classes I've taken and learning things that I had only touched upon briefly,” Pereira says. “Diving into what it looks like to pull data and scrape the internet for posts on social media and going into certain programs has been great to learn about.”
Hightower notes that opportunities like the Bryant Research Grant allow students to add to the knowledge of their field while contributing to personal growth as students take ownership of their ideas, investigate them, and realize just how capable they are of meeting challenges head-on.
“Research experience turns the faculty-student relationship into a genuine partnership. Faculty bring experience and scaffolding, and students bring energy, curiosity, and insight into new ideas,” Hightower says. “One of the biggest benefits has been watching Christian grow in confidence and develop his scholarly voice.”
With a new academic year on the horizon, Pereira and Hightower are working on the theory side of the research and aim to wrap up the research by the fall. The paper will then be submitted for publication in an academic journal — an exciting thought for Pereira — and he will eventually present his work at Bryant’s 2026 REDay and at April’s New England Political Science Association annual meeting in Burlington, Vermont.
“In today's world, communication is vastly different from what it was 10 or even 20 years ago. Studying how those in power, especially the executive, can influence Congress today through their communication style has differed from years past,” Pereira says. “The language and rhetoric that's used is all very different.”