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

Journalism would only be improved if every journalist got off of Twitter tomorrow. It's not representative of mainstream opinion. And the artificially created and cultivated Twitter echo chamber couldn't help but warp anybody's neutrality. Unfortunately, it's still seen as the best way to drive clicks.

The real number is that <i>10% of Twitter users</i> [1] produce 97% of political Tweets.<p>(I.e. this is &quot;just&quot; one social media site, used by a minority of Americans.)<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pewresearch.org&#x2F;fact-tank&#x2F;2019&#x2F;04&#x2F;10&#x2F;share-of-u-s-adults-using-social-media-including-facebook-is-mostly-unchanged-since-2018&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pewresearch.org&#x2F;fact-tank&#x2F;2019&#x2F;04&#x2F;10&#x2F;share-of-u-...</a>

A cautionary tale for those who are perennially tempted to think Twitter = &quot;the world&quot; or that Twitter is like sooo super important and that it &quot;matters.&quot;<p>Granted, wishful thinking by said parties is sometimes enough to make it matter. For example a corporation that responds to customer complaints on Twitter faster than the ones that arrive in its customer-service inbox, is making Twitter matter more than it does.

If you, like me, find the non-political part of Twitter valuable, I have discovered that Twitter has built in filtering tools.<p>It&#x27;s pretty simple. Each time I see a tweet I dislike, I pick one word from it and add it to my &quot;mute word&quot; list. It&#x27;s now filled with words like &quot;trump&quot;, &quot;liberal&quot;, &quot;minister&quot;, etc, and now I see interesting technical discussions instead of political trash.

See the 1% rule of the internet:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)</a><p>“... only 1% of the users of a website actively create new content, while the other 99% of the participants only lurk.”<p>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 and frequency of posts by a tiny minority of Twitter’s users. I also discussed this a little in “Twitter’s growth conundrum”: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;muckhacker.com&#x2F;the-twitter-growth-conundrum-8339eda162a4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;muckhacker.com&#x2F;the-twitter-growth-conundrum-8339eda1...</a>

Not really a surprise - is it? I bet [small-percentage]% of Americans produce [very-large-percentage]% of tech tweets too. Same with sewing tweets. Same with porn tweets.<p>Being very active in politics is either a career choice or a hobby. And very active in this case means talking about it. It&#x27;s like knowing about celebrity gossip at this point because that&#x27;s practically what it is for a lot of this stuff.

People generally, especially in younger generations need to accept that the internet != the real world.<p>I’ve had a number of friends on both sides of the isle fall into the internet trap of politics, existential dread and dilution. A few to the extent of developing serious mental health problems, even college educated people.<p>It’s scary to watch this happen to people you know and love. Some might label me, but I enjoy not wasting time following the mainstream media &#x2F; social media noise.

It&#x27;s baffling why people think it&#x27;s OK to retweet political stuff just because everyone else does it. If your profile says &quot;data expert&quot; or anything, why then do i get political propaganda when i follow you? At least have the decency to add &quot;and political commentator&quot; to your profile

How could this be surprising? A small fraction of the population of America is a Twitter user in the first place.

&gt; Prolific political tweeters make up just 6% of <i>all Twitter users</i> but generate 20% of all tweets and 73% of tweets mentioning national politics.<p>I feel like this wording is disingenuous when the methods state:<p>&gt; The analysis of Twitter users in this report is based on a nationally representative survey conducted from Nov. 21 to Dec. 17, 2018, among a sample of 2,791 U.S. adults ages 18 years and older who have a Twitter account and agreed to allow researchers to follow and report on that account. This study examines only the subset of respondents (N=2,427)

The rest is busy working, studying, raising kids or having a life...

Further reason why the &quot;x political thing is trending on twitter&quot; style headline that has become ubiquitous is stupid.

I grepped for &quot;bot&quot; on this, the source and their methodology page. Bot activity on Twitter is especially high and not at least mentioning how they accounted for that kinda voids this whole effort. It&#x27;d be very interesting to identify the political leanings of automated posts. I bet they could analyze the messages to determine bot networks. Disappointed this wasn&#x27;t considered.

And your life is much better off if you mute those people.

Wonder what percentage of Americans produce 97% of main stream media news and commentary? Would it be over 0.2%?

<i>2.2% of Americans produce 97% of political tweets</i><p>I guess people act the same online as they do at Thanksgiving dinner.

Twitter is to political thought what advertising slogans are to consumer goods or soundbites are to news stories. &quot;It&#x27;s the real thing&quot; tells us nothing meaningful about Coca Cola. &quot;Just do it&quot; tells us nothing meaningful about Nike sneakers. Slogans, tweets, and soundbites are designed to influence our thinking with catchy thoughts INSTEAD OF informed thought. The ability to create concise content is different than the ability to analyze and understand on a deep level; not mutually exclusive of course, but it doesn&#x27;t really matter: the masses will be overwhelmingly influenced by the former rather than the latter.

That comes out to about 6 million people? Seems like a huge number to me.

Only a small share of people who use twitter actually tweet and yes a smaller share of those people tweet on a specific subject. I&#x27;m no sure how this is news. &quot;Only a small share of U.S. adults product majority of tweets on ______.&quot; Fill in the blank.. only those interest in a topic will tweet about it.

in the methodology section, the said they only focussed on tweets concerning national-level politics.<p>they don’t mention if they attempted to filter out bots or non-americansposing as Americans

A very small percentage of people write books, does that mean we&#x27;d be better off without books?

aligns with the 1-2% community contribution factor: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)</a>

And &lt;1% read them?

So what % of Americans _read_ the political tweets?

is 13% an unusual rate for a topic? are the bulk of sports &#x2F; cooking &#x2F; science &#x2F; art tweets also each from a 13% slice?

You could cross out those last three words.

what percent of tweets are political?

Unsurprising

What percentage of TV users generate any content on television?<p>Many people just spectate, whether it’s TV or social.