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Twitter isn’t real life, and a new analysis from the Pew Research Center backs that up.
According to Pew’s findings, approximately a quarter of American adults use Twitter, and a year-long study found that 33% of the tweets it reviewed are political in nature.
More significantly, Pew finds that "high-volume” political tweeters — those who tweeted political content 10 or more times over that year — approach politics differently than “low-volume” tweeters do.
Other findings: 53% of frequent political tweeters say they talk about politics with others each last once a week (compared with 33% of infrequent political tweeters); 46% of high-volume political tweeters contributed to a political campaign in the last year (versus 21% of low-volume ones); and 27% of frequent political tweeters say they participate in politics because they enjoy it instead of being a civic duty (compared with 17% infrequent political tweeters).
Democrats also use Twitter more than Republicans do to comment on politics: 30% of Dems said they tweeted about political or social issues in the last 30 days before the survey, versus 17% of Republicans who said the same.
And the Pew study contains one more interesting set of numbers: A quarter of adults on Twitter produce 99% of all political tweets from this group.
The Pew study consists of two components: 1) an online survey of 2,548 U.S. adult Twitter users conducted May 17-31, 2021; 2) actual tweets from a representative sample of Twitter users from May 2020 to May 2021.