Pew Examines the Good and Bad Points of Consuming News on Twitter

Think tank Pew Research Center recently conducted an in-depth survey of the attitudes of U.S. adults toward Twitter, finding a mix of good and bad. Of the 2,548 U.S. adult Twitter users polled from May 17 through 31, 46% said the social network increased their understanding of current events in the past year, and 30% said it made them feel more politically engaged. Conversely, 33% said they found a lot of misleading information on the platform, and 53% considered inaccurate or misleading information to be a major problem on Twitter. Pew wrote in its report, “Twitter is used by roughly one-quarter of U.S. adults, and the site has become a space where users do everything from getting news to hearing from elected officials.” A companion analysis by the think tank of the role that news plays on Twitter found that 69% of Twitter users get news from the platform. Among those users, only 8% called Twitter the most important way they got news, while 59% said it was important but not paramount. Pew said 70% of Twitter news consumers have used the social network to follow live news events, up from 59% in 2015. The accuracy of content on the platform came up again, as the think tank said just 7% of news consumers on Twitter had a “great deal” of trust in the accuracy of information on the site, while two-thirds had at least some trust—far higher than the 27% of Americans who expressed the same sentiments about social media as a whole. Two-thirds of Twitter news consumers like the amount of news they see on the platform, while 32% feel worn out by too much of that content. Pew examined a subset of 1,026 respondents who shared a valid Twitter handle for research purposes, allowing their survey responses to be matched to their Twitter activity, finding that the top 25% of active tweets were behind 97% of all tweets from U.S. adults from June 12 through Sept. 12. The company said “This represents a familiar pattern on social media, in which a relatively small share of highly active users produce the vast majority of content.” Pew added, “High-volume tweeters differ from their less prolific counterparts in important ways: A majority visit the site daily, and roughly one in five say they do so too many times to count on a typical day. Their use of Twitter also carries a more overtly political valence: They are more likely than others to say the site has increased how politically engaged they feel in the past year. They also respond differently to the presence of certain negative interactions on the platform. High-volume users are roughly twice as likely as others to say they have personally experienced harassing or abusive behavior on the platform (24%, versus 11% of less active tweeters). But they are less likely to view the overall tone or civility of discussions on the site as a major problem (by a margin of 27% to 42%).” Other findings by Pew related to Twitter users in general included: 53% of Twitter users, and 65% of the subset mentioned above, said their profiles were set to public, but Pew found that 89% of the latter group actually had public profiles.Of respondents who said their accounts were private or they were unsure of their settings, 83% had public profiles.Democrats and Republicans had differing views on Twitter’s major issues and its overall impact on democracy. While 38% of overall Twitter users found the platform to be mostly bad for American democracy, 37% mostly good and 24% believing it had no impact wither way, Republicans and Republican leaners were more than twice as likely as their Democrat counterparts to call Twitter bad for American democracy, at 60% compared with 28%. Meanwhile, about one-half of Democrats said Twitter was good for American democracy, versus just 17% of Republicans. Republicans were also far more likely than Democrats to say it was a major problem that Twitter limits the reach or visibility of certain posts (59% versus 17%) or bans users from its platform (61% compared with 6%).A total of 17% of respondents said they have personally experienced harassing or abusive behavior on Twitter, with few differences based on age, gender, education or political identification.While as mentioned above, highly active tweeters produce the vast majority of content on the platform, original posts made up just 14% of tweets from the top one-quarter of U.S. adults by tweet volume. Retweets accounted for 49% of those posts, while replies to other users made up 33%. Posts from this group received an average of just 37 likes and one retweet per month. Pew’s findings on Twitter news consumers included: 74% of Democrats in this group have at least some trust in the accuracy of news and information on Twitter, compared with 52% of Republicans.46% of Republicans are worn out by the amount of news they see on the platform, versus 25% of Democrats.Twitter news consumers are more likely than other Twitter users to be Democrats, as well as to have college degrees and be relatively young. Liberal Democrats make up 42% of Twitter news consumers, compared with 28% of other users, and 77% of members of this group were under 50, while 46% had at least a bachelor’s degree.46% of Twitter news consumers said they visit the site daily.57% of Twitter news consumers believe the social network increased their understanding of current events, versus 23% of other Twitter users, while 37% were more likely to say using the site increased how politically engaged they feel, compared with 15% of other Twitter users.31% of Twitter news consumers say the platform increased their stress levels, compared with just 14% of other Twitter users.

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Pew Examines the Good and Bad Points of Consuming News on Twitter

46% of respondents said the social network increased their understanding of current events in the past year

David Cohen

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David Cohen