What do people really tweet about?
What do people really tweet about? The question was raised by Washington-based Pew Research Center that has published a study trying to answer the question while it still seems to be an open question if Tesla CEO Elon Musk will buy Twitter or not. The Pew study shows politics is an important subject for 24% of Americans over 50. Roughly one-quarter of American adults use Twitter.
Americans ages 50 and older make up 24% of the US adult Twitter population but produce nearly 80% of all political tweets. And 36% of the tweets produced by the typical (median) US adult Twitter user age 50 or older contain political content, roughly five times the share (7%) for the tweets from the typical 18- to 49-year-old.
“Americans who tweet the most about politics differ in several ways from those for whom politics is a less central topic of discussion. These “high-volume” political tweeters are significantly more likely than other users to say that they use Twitter to express their own opinions (67% vs. 34%); that they talk about politics with others at least once a week (53% vs. 33%); that they contributed to a political campaign in the last year (46% vs. 21%); or that they participate in politics because they enjoy it, as opposed to viewing it as a civic duty (27% vs. 14%).”
Findings:
- Retweets and quote tweets are more likely to contain political content than original tweets.
- Democrats and Republicans who use Twitter have different political experiences on the site. A larger share of Democrats than Republicans (including political independents who “lean” toward either party) say they have tweeted about political or social issues in the 30 days preceding the survey (30% vs. 17%). And a larger share of Democrats say that Twitter is very effective at raising public awareness about political or social issues (28% vs. 17%).
- Political figures make up 20% of the accounts followed by a large number of U.S. adults.
- Users say political content makes up a larger share of what they see than of what they post. Some 41% of US adult Twitter users say that a lot of what they see on Twitter is related to political or social issues. But just 12% say a lot of what they themselves post is related to these topics.
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