Small share of U.S. adults produce majority of tweets on national politics
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Re: Small share of U.S. adults produce majority of tweets on national politics
#2The real number is that 10% of Twitter users [1] produce 97% of political Tweets.
(I.e. this is "just" one social media site, used by a minority of Americans.)
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/10/share-of-u-...
Re: Small share of U.S. adults produce majority of tweets on national politics
#3The rest is busy working, studying, raising kids or having a life...
Re: Small share of U.S. adults produce majority of tweets on national politics
#4The real number is that 10% of Twitter users [1] produce 97% of political Tweets. (I.e. this is "just" one social media site, used by a minority of Americans.) [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/10/share-of-u-...
Also, it's 97% of political tweets from US adults that mentioned national politics from June 10, 2018, through June 9, 2019, not 97% of all political tweets (many of which are on behalf of organizations).
Re: Small share of U.S. adults produce majority of tweets on national politics
#5> Prolific political tweeters make up just 6% of all Twitter users but generate 20% of all tweets and 73% of tweets mentioning national politics.
I feel like this wording is disingenuous when the methods state:
> The analysis of Twitter users in this report is based on a nationally representative survey conducted from Nov. 21 to Dec. 17, 2018, among a sample of 2,791 U.S. adults ages 18 years and older who have a Twitter account and agreed to allow researchers to follow and report on that account. This study examines only the subset of respondents (N=2,427)
Re: Small share of U.S. adults produce majority of tweets on national politics
#6Not really a surprise - is it? I bet [small-percentage]% of Americans produce [very-large-percentage]% of tech tweets too. Same with sewing tweets. Same with porn tweets.
Being very active in politics is either a career choice or a hobby. And very active in this case means talking about it. It's like knowing about celebrity gossip at this point because that's practically what it is for a lot of this stuff.
Re: Small share of U.S. adults produce majority of tweets on national politics
#7A cautionary tale for those who are perennially tempted to think Twitter = "the world" or that Twitter is like sooo super important and that it "matters."
Granted, wishful thinking by said parties is sometimes enough to make it matter. For example a corporation that responds to customer complaints on Twitter faster than the ones that arrive in its customer-service inbox, is making Twitter matter more than it does.
Re: Small share of U.S. adults produce majority of tweets on national politics
#8The rest is busy working, studying, raising kids or having a life...
Well the 2.2% of us are disproportionately PoC and womxn who can't just "work" or "study" without harassment in the workplace, and "raise kids or have a life" without being shot in the street or convicted of crimes because of the color of our skin.
Passiveness is privilege.
Re: Small share of U.S. adults produce majority of tweets on national politics
#9That comes out to about 6 million people? Seems like a huge number to me.
Re: Small share of U.S. adults produce majority of tweets on national politics
#10Not really a surprise - is it? I bet [small-percentage]% of Americans produce [very-large-percentage]% of tech tweets too. Same with sewing tweets. Same with porn tweets. Being very active in politics is either a career choice or a hobby. And very active in this case means talking about it. It's like knowing about celebrity gossip at this point because that's practically what it is for a lot of this stuff.
The most surprising thing to me is the split in age distribution among user base vs. overall tweeting vs. political tweeting. Users 18-49 were 73% of the user base and produced 72% of tweets, but only 27% of political tweets. Users 50+ were only 26% of the user base and produced only 28% of tweets, but 73% of political tweets.