  Online government petitions represent a new data-rich mode of political
participation. This work examines the thus far understudied dynamics of sharing
petitions on social media in order to garner signatures and, ultimately, a
government response. Using 20 months of Twitter data comprising over 1 million
tweets linking to a petition, we perform analyses of networks constructed of
petitions and supporters on Twitter, revealing implicit social dynamics
therein. We find that Twitter users do not exclusively share petitions on one
issue nor do they share exclusively popular petitions. Among the over 240,000
Twitter users, we find latent support groups, with the most central users
primarily being politically active "average" individuals. Twitter as a platform
for sharing government petitions, thus, appears to hold potential to foster the
creation of and coordination among a new form of latent support interest groups
online.
