Pew Research Center: One-Third of Tweets From US Adults Are Political

Political content being prevalent on Twitter probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise, but the extent to which it is prevalent might. A recent study by Pew Research Center found that one-third of tweets from adults in the U.S. are political in nature. The think tank arrived at its findings via a May 2021 survey of a representative sample of U.S. adults who use Twitter, as well as an analysis of English-language tweets posted by a subset of those users between May 2020 and May 2021. According to Pew, one-quarter of adult Twitter users in the U.S. are responsible for 99% of all political tweets, echoing its past findings that the vast majority of tweets are produced by a minority of users, political or otherwise. Americans 50 and older make up 24% of adult Twitter users in the U.S. but account for 78% of all political tweets from U.S. adults. Pew found that Americans who tweet the most about politics are significantly more likely than other users to say that they use the social network to express their own opinions (67% vs. 34%), that they talk about politics with others at least once a week (53% vs. 33%) or that they contributed to a political campaign in the past year (46% vs. 21%). However, those who tweet about politics the most are actually less likely to think Twitter is at least somewhat effective at changing people’s minds about political or social issues, with 34% believing so, compared with 50% of those who tweet less about politics. Other findings by Pew included: Democrats and independents who lean Democratic are more likely than Republicans and Republican-leaners to say they have tweeted about political or social issues in the past 30 days (30% versus 17%) and that Twitter is very effective at raising public awareness about political or social issues (28% vs. 17%).Democrats who use Twitter are twice as likely as Republicans to say they mostly follow accounts with similar political beliefs to their own (40% vs. 20%) or that they disagree with few or none of the tweets they see (33% vs. 16%).Retweets and quote tweets are more likely to contain political content than original tweets: 44% of retweets and 42% of quote tweets from these users were found to pertain to politics, compared with 26% for replies and just 8% for original tweets.41% of respondents feel that a lot of what they see on the social network is related to politics or political issues, while just 12% said a lot of what they post themselves fits that description.Politicians, government officials and public offices make up just 1% of all the accounts followed by this representative sample of U.S. adult Twitter users, but they are far more prevalent among the most-followed accounts, making up 20% of the accounts followed by at least 20 of the respondents. The pattern was similar for media organizations, journalists and policy or advocacy organizations.A total of 58% of respondents engaged in political activities such as tweeting about a political issue or voting both on Twitter and elsewhere, while just 3% only did so on the social network.37% used Twitter to post humorous content or memes that touch on political issues in the past year, while 35% did so to express support for a political campaign or candidate.

Politics

Pew Research Center: One-Third of Tweets From US Adults Are Political

Americans 50 and older accounted for 78% of them

David Cohen

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David Cohen