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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

#81

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #75
0xcde4c3db wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. By these numbers, users 15-17 are <1% of the user base and produce 0% of political tweets. (And even more dramatically, despite being more than 0% of users, they also produce 0% of tweets.) Even after allowing for…

I calculated the percentages for two groups from a chart of four groups, so maybe there's more possible rounding error than you anticipated? The user base numbers in that chart do only add up to 99%, though.

Re: Small share of U.S. adults produce majority of tweets on national politics

#82

Post by jdkee »

spinach wrote: post #69
blfr wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Journalism is over. It doesn't matter what journalists do now. It was a by-product of mass media massive ad business which is being quickly taken over by tech companies.

Isn't journalism a pillar of democracy? The well educated professionals who deep, lengthy dives into corruption, raw data, etc. How will democracy survive if no is being paid to spends weeks, years, to go deep on a subject and citizens can't be fully informed?

"Democracy dies in darkness."

Re: Small share of U.S. adults produce majority of tweets on national politics

#83

Post by simonsarris »

virmundi wrote: post #31
modeless wrote: post #11

If you, like me, find the non-political part of Twitter valuable, I have discovered that Twitter has built in filtering tools. It's pretty simple. Each time I see a tweet I dislike, I pick one word from it and add it to my "mute word" list. It's now filled with words like "trump", "liberal", "minister", etc, and now I see interesting technical discussions instead of political trash.

Serious question: what is the benefit of Twitter? I never understood it. Since you’ve found a utility niche, would you expand on the statement?

I've made more friends and acquaintances on Twitter than any other social network. It's also easily the most intellectual social network. If you care deeply about something, you will find your people on Twitter.

For me and many others it is a place where we can share what we consider beautiful and sacred, what we find compelling and carefully thought. It is an agora shimmering with such things.

Even though much of the good web has retreated to private spaces like email lists and secret slacks, I am in some of those things because someone was able to find me on Twitter.

(And yeah we all need to vent, and have our human bouts of melancholy. But if you use twitter solely to participate in the negative, you are really missing out!)

Re: Small share of U.S. adults produce majority of tweets on national politics

#84

Post by paulddraper »

jml7c5 wrote: post #64
paulddraper wrote: post #2

The 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-...

I think you cited the wrong source for that. It's actually the page linked in this submission that has that statistic.

The original post says

> the political tweeting habits of the [22% of the American public](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/10/share-of-u-...) that uses Twitter

I linked to that link, where you can see in the first graphic that in 2019, 22% of U.S. adults use Twitter. (73% YouTube, 69% Facebook, 37% Instagram).

Re: Small share of U.S. adults produce majority of tweets on national politics

#85

Post by paulddraper »

jdkee wrote: post #82
spinach wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't journalism a pillar of democracy? The well educated professionals who deep, lengthy dives into corruption, raw data, etc. How will democracy survive if no is being paid to spends weeks, years, to go deep on a subject and citizens can't be fully informed?

"Democracy dies in darkness."

Is that a warning, or a mission objective?

Re: Small share of U.S. adults produce majority of tweets on national politics

#86

Post by jliptzin »

paulddraper wrote: post #2

The 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-...

I would also just assume 10% of twitter users produce 97% of all tweets.

Re: Small share of U.S. adults produce majority of tweets on national politics

#87

Post by dredmorbius »

pixelmonkey wrote: post #19

See the 1% rule of the internet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) “... only 1% of the users of a website actively create new content, while the other 99% of the participants only lurk.” This is why “social listening” companies (which often amount to “Twitter listening” companies) present a very warped picture of reality when they try to extrapolate general consumer interests from the content…

I've measured this directly several times across several sites myself.

Google+'s low regular-engagement rates (0.16% of all profiles) actually starts to look more reasonable given:

1. Google created G+ profiles for EVERY Android, Gmail, and YouTube user from ~2012 - 2016 (may have been 2015), or about 3 billion accounts in all.

2. The 1% rule.

I'd made that measurement in 2015, Eric Enge of (then) Stone Temple Consulting followed up with a much larger sample but the same basic methodology, to confirm and expand on my findings:

https://blogs.perficientdigital.com/2015/04/14/real-numbers-...

When G+ was shutting down, I had the opportunity to look at data concerning its 8-million-plus Communities. The vast majority of those had at best one user. Even in the final months of the site communities were being created and removed (or deleted) at a furious rate -- thousands per day. From November 2018 - January 2019, several hundred net new communities were created.

The most hyperactive communities (and posters) were almost entirely spam. There were numerous of what I considered legitimate and healthy communities, most with anywhere from a handful of members to a few thousand. More than 10k tended to peter off into noise territory quickly, and based on overall engagement, the sweet spot seemed to be somewhere in the 2k - 3k range, if some of my analysis bears out.

Given the 90/9/1 rule, that would mean about 200-300 actual active users, and a dominent core group of 20-30, which seems to be where most online discussions find themselves most "real", for want of a better term.

Quantity-based measures of quality can be exceedingly misleading. And based on the headline of this article alone, the impression that it's Twitter itself that is somehow unusual or remarkable in this story is quite misleading. This is a general trait of any social discussion.

Re: Small share of U.S. adults produce majority of tweets on national politics

#88

Post by thaumasiotes »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #81
thaumasiotes wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. By these numbers, users 15-17 are <1% of the user base and produce 0% of political tweets. (And even more dramatically, despite being more than 0% of users, they also produce 0% of tweets.) Even after allowing for…

I calculated the percentages for two groups from a chart of four groups, so maybe there's more possible rounding error than you anticipated? The user base numbers in that chart do only add up to 99%, though.

Looking at the graphic in the article, it looks like their denominator is "all tweets from US adults". In other words, users 15-17 make 0% of "tweets" by definition. But of course, they are well over 0% of tweets in the ordinary sense.

I see no particular reason why tweets from 18-year-olds are especially more interesting than tweets from 17-year-olds.

Re: Small share of U.S. adults produce majority of tweets on national politics

#89

Post by DarthGhandi »

modeless wrote: post #11

If you, like me, find the non-political part of Twitter valuable, I have discovered that Twitter has built in filtering tools. It's pretty simple. Each time I see a tweet I dislike, I pick one word from it and add it to my "mute word" list. It's now filled with words like "trump", "liberal", "minister", etc, and now I see interesting technical discussions instead of political trash.

I have a few dozen followers, all of them are very real people, many with very differing interests.

Spend some time each month pruning follower bots and unfollow the accounts that were once interesting but monetise themselves.

It's a bit of effort but for niche science/engineering/software stuff it's actually quite useful to see. Especially science/astronomy.

I look at it as a ”legal” drug. Take too much and you are fucked. In moderation and taken with care it's actually quite cathartic.

Re: Small share of U.S. adults produce majority of tweets on national politics

#90

Post by bakuninsbart »

jackfoxy wrote: post #63
blfr wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Journalism is over. It doesn't matter what journalists do now. It was a by-product of mass media massive ad business which is being quickly taken over by tech companies.

It's more like the veneer of unbiased trustworthy journalism was a by-product of the mass media ad business. Journalism has reverted back to the journalism mean which was always biased, propagandizing, shoddy, and appealed to the confirmation biases of the target audiences since the 18th century. That's not to say there are not excellently written and researched articles produced today, but hey, today anyone can be a…

I wonder if there might have only been the appearance of unbiased trustworthy journalism, as the "thought bubble" of a society was so much smaller just 20 years ago, and journalists could get away with much less knowledge on a topic since readers couldn't really fact check them.
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