CHICAGO — Members of the Illinois General Assembly are embracing social media, according to what’s believed to be a first-of-its-kind survey of social media use by members of the Illinois General Assembly and Illinois Congressional Delegation – Illinois’ Elected Officials Get Social: 2009 Social Media Survey.

The survey shows that about 44 percent of Illinois Representatives (52 members) are on Facebook and more than half of Illinois Senators (32 members) have Facebook pages. Additional results confirm that:

• Fifty-three Illinois senators and representatives, and members of the Illinois Congressional Delegation, send out updates on Twitter.
• U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin’s politician page has the most Facebook friends with 5,162 supporters.
• More than 90 legislators have Web sites and 61 percent of those Web sites are active with updates almost daily.
• Eleven Illinois elected officials blog. Of those, U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk, Illinois Senator Dan Rutherford, and Illinois Representatives Barbara Flynn Currie, Lou Lang and Deborah Mell post at least every week.
• Forty-seven members of the Illinois Congressional Delegation and Illinois General Assembly are on LinkedIn.
• Flickr, YouTube, RSS feeds, Digg, Del.icio.us and Newsvine are used by some Illinois elected officials, but are much less common.

“Social media is an essential component of most awareness-building campaigns,” said Kathy Schaeffer, president of Kathy Schaeffer and Associates, Inc. (KSA), a Chicago communications firm specializing in issues management. “Therefore, it’s important to know which of our state elected officials are active on social media.”

The survey was completed in September 2009, by staff at KSA, a public relations firm that works with associations, nonprofits and corporations. KSA uses social media strategically, as a component of overall communications plans.

One example of KSA’s social media work is the 3 to 1 ratio of “yes” votes in the April 2009 referendum of Lake County voters about whether to extend Illinois Route 53. KSA communicated the importance of building Route 53 by using Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to build a following of interested “yes” voters, who subsequently got out the vote.