Study: Congressional Twitter accounts are plagued by phony followers

Congress is followed by a lot of phonies: a new study shows a large percentage of accounts following legislators on Twitter are fake.

Jon Tilton, the general manager for digital marketing firm Advocacy Media, ran a follower check last weekend on every member of Congress using StatusPeople, a tool designed specifically to check for fake followers on Twitter. He found that an average of 38 percent of accounts following representatives on Twitter and 42 percent of those following senators are a combination of fake and inactive accounts. The averages held true within a few percentage points when broken down by party.