Pew: one-third of tweets from US adults are political

One-third (33%) of all tweets made by US adults are political in nature, according to a recent Pew Research study.

The research, which analyzed a representative sample of US adult Twitter users’ tweets from between May 1, 2020 and May 31, 2021, also found that while older Americans (aged 50 and over) make up just 24% of US adult Twitter users, they produce 78% of all political tweets.

Overall, more than one-third (36%) of above-50 US Twitter users’ tweets contain political content, more than five times that share (7%) for 18-49 year-olds.

Graphic from Pew Research

Twitter’s userbase is relatively small compared to other social media platforms – roughly 23% of American adults use the service, compared to 69% using Facebook and 40% using Instagram. TikTok, meanwhile, has surged in popularity among young people.

But the platform has an outsized influence on global discussion, in part due to its high volume of public figures and journalists that use it for communications and marketing.

There were also interesting ideological differences in Pew’s survey: Democrats were nearly twice as likely (30%) than Republicans (17%) to report tweeting or retweeting about politics. Indeed, Democrats reported higher activity on Twitter on most subjects, the exception being sports (which was equal).

Democrats (40%) were also twice as likely as Republicans (20%) to report that they mostly followed accounts with similar beliefs as their own and that they disagree with few or no tweets they see (33% vs 16%).

The statistics may reflect Democrats’ propensity to use Twitter in a more partisan way than Republicans. Alternatively it may signify the exodus of right-wing accounts from Twitter following the platform’s crackdown on harmful speech that began in 2020 and continued into 2021.