Study reveals just 6 percent of US Twitter users write nearly 75 percent of the platform’s political posts – and most of them are critical of Trump
- A Pew study finds most of Twitter’s political posts come from a few users
- A whopping 73 percent of political tweets come from 6 percent of users
- Most of those users are older and many are more polarized
- The study mirrors one conducted earlier this year that showed a small number of users posts most of the platform’s tweets
A new national study from Pew Research reports that a small number of Twitter users post the vast majority of political tweets.
According to the study, which analyzed 1.1 million tweets of about 2,400 public Twitter between November and December last year, a minority of 6 percent of users accounted for 73 percent of political posts that appear on the platform.
Of those tweets, the vast majority were critical of US President Donald Trump, reports Pew.
Most of Twitter’s political tweets come from a small percentage of its users finds a new study from Pew Research (Stock image)
According to the study, a whopping 72 percent of the tweets assessed by researchers were critical of the president while just 25 percent showed support.
The research mirrors previous findings from earlier this year that suggested Twitter’s conversations are driven by a small number of users who tweet prolifically.
Those users also tend to be more polarized in their viewpoints and actively consume news on a regular basis – a confluence of factors that may contribute to the often heated style of discourse on the platform.
According to Pew, of the most prolific users, 55 percent of them identified as either ‘very liberal’ or ‘very conservative’
Political posters on the platform also tended to be much older than Twitter’s general user base.
Pew found that most of its prolific political tweeters were also more polarized about their view and identified as ‘very liberal’ or ‘very conservative’
Though people ages 65 and older only make up 10 percent of the platform’s tweets, they disproportionately pen 33 percent of the posts relating to politics.
Perhaps even more indicative of the platform’s relation to politics, however, is the fact that most users on Twitter tended to stay away from espousing political views all together.
A vast majority – 69 percent of users – say they tweeted about politics either once or never at all.