One-third of posts made on Twitter by US adults are related to politics while more than 40 percent of retweets and quoted tweets are related to this topic.
The Pew Research Center has published a study, conducted between May 1, 2022 and May 31, 2021, in which it has analyzed the way in which Americans use Twitter and the type of content they publish, retweet and quote. .
One of the most notable results is that, of the analyzed tweets from a representative sample of US adult users, 33 percent of them are political in natureas this institution has advanced.
This center has been able to identify the demographic groups that contribute the most to the overall volume of political content on Twitter and has determined that Americans 50 and older make up 24 percent of the social network’s adult population.
Despite being a relatively low percentage, these users produce 78 percent of political tweets, unlike users concentrated in the age range between 18 and 49 years. In that case, only 7 percent of the tweets made by these users were political in nature.
Although political content abounds on this platform, the Pew Research Center warns that the vast majority of these tweets are produced by a minority of users and that these posts are more likely to be retweeted or quoted than to create new posts.
So much so that, according to research, four of Every ten retweets (that is, 44% of the total) and quoted tweets (42%) from these users are political. It is not so frequent, on the other hand, to reply to this type of publication, since only 26 percent of responses to tweets of a political nature were recorded.
This determines, on the other hand, that the publication of political content it is a rare practice for most users since, of the almost 1 million tweets examined for this study, the average Twitter user shared only three posts with political content during the time analyzed.
Although these data are contradictory to the fact that a third of US adult posts on Twitter are of a political nature, the research center indicates that these results are due to the fact that in the United States it is not common for users to tweet about anything. theme.
In this country, on the other hand, members of the Twitter community generally either retweet content from others or quote it, but they do not generate these political posts themselves.
Another aspect that the study brings up regarding the interest shown by users of the social network in politics refers to the percentage of political figures that follow them on Twitter.
In the sample, it is determined that among the accounts followed by at least 20 Twitter users, 20 percent are of a government nature and another 35 percent, of the media or journalists.
Republicans and Democrats
Another aspect that Pew has investigated refers to the way in which Democratic and Republican citizens use Twitter and how they relate to publications of a political nature.
To begin with, the report finds that Twitter features a higher proportion of Democrats than Republicansso the former produce a higher proportion of political tweets than the latter.
In this sense, a greater proportion of Democrats (30%) said they had tweeted about political or social issues in the 30 days prior to the survey, versus 17 percent of Republican US citizens.
In addition, a higher proportion of Democrats said that Twitter is very effective in raising public awareness of political or social issues (28% vs. 17% of Republicans).
On the other hand, the report finds that Democrats who use Twitter are more likely than Republicans to say that the accounts they follow have political beliefs similar to their own, regardless of whether they belong to political figures or not.
In relation to the type of content that may interest them the most or with which they interact most regularly, the majority of Democrats claim to have tweeted about culture, entertainment or sports. The latter, in the same proportion as Republicans (17%).