In the months before and after the contentious 2020 election, a third of tweets from American adults were about politics or political issues, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center. But what about the content and nature of these posts, such as when they were most prevalent on the site, or the terms that most distinguished political from non-political tweets?
Here are five facts about political content on Twitter, based on the Center’s analysis of nearly 1 million English-language tweets from U.S. adults posted between May 1, 2020, and May 31, 2021.
Pew Research Center conducted this study to gain insight into the political engagement, attitudes, and behaviors of Twitter users on Twitter. For this analysis, we surveyed 2,548 US adult Twitter users in May 2021 about their experiences on the site, as well as how they relate to politics outside of Twitter. All of those who participated in this survey are members of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through a national random sampling of residential addresses, and indicated that they use Twitter.
Center researchers also examined the actual Twitter profiles of a subset of survey participants who agreed to share their handles for research purposes. First, the researchers collected all publicly viewable tweets posted between May 2020 and May 2021 by these users. The researchers then used a machine learning classifier to identify which of those tweets mentioned politics or political concepts.
To identify keywords and phrases that were distinctive to political tweets, the researchers first used peer point information to determine which terms were most likely to appear in a political tweet but not in a nonpolitical tweet, then calculated the proportion of political tweets that refer to each distinctive term or phrase. as well as its common variations.
The methodology used for this analysis is presented below.
Most political tweets from American adults are retweets. American adults on Twitter often post about politics using someone else’s words: 62% of tweets the Center’s analysis identified as political were retweets, with no additional text from the user who shared them. That was significantly higher than the share of retweets in nonpolitical tweets posted by American adults (38%).
Political tweets that users chose to retweet also tended to be quite popular and received more engagement on the platform than retweets of non-political content. The typical (median) political tweet retweeted by Americans received a total of 4,312 likes, almost three times as many as the median non-political retweet (1,490 likes).
In the wake of big events, politics makes up a larger than normal part of what American adults tweet. At certain times during the study period, political content made up a larger than usual share of posts from the Centre’s representative sample of Twitter users, with some of the most notable increases coinciding with major political and social events. For example, the proportion of political tweets was especially large in the weeks following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers in May 2020, as well as during the period between the attack on the US Capitol on January 6 of 2021 and the president Joe Biden’s inauguration later that month.
The daily volume of political tweets from US adults fluctuates much more than the daily volume of non-political tweets. On a typical day, the Center’s representative sample of 942 adult Twitter users posted roughly twice as many non-political tweets (1,206) as political tweets (565). But the volume of political tweets itself varied widely from day to day. For example, on the busiest days for political tweets, Americans posted more than 14 times as many of these tweets as they did on the slowest days for political tweets. In contrast, there was less than a threefold difference in tweet volume for non-political tweets between the most and least active days for this type of content.
During the year studied, references to Donald Trump were more exclusively associated with political content on Twitter than any other term. Political content on Twitter touches on a wide range of issues, individuals, and government institutions. But certain terms are much more frequent in political tweets than in non-political ones. These “flag terms” are words or phrases that are much more likely to appear in a political tweet than in a non-political tweet. In the Center’s year-long study period, no term or figure was more distinctive to political tweets than Trump.
Mentions of the former president, including variations of his name and Twitter username, appeared in 28% of political tweets from U.S. adults during this time. Other overtly political terms in these tweets included references to the presidency, the 2020 election, Congress, and the Republican and Democratic parties.
Political tweets from Republicans and Democrats are more likely to mention the opposing party than their own. One in ten political tweets posted by Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents during the study period mentioned the Republican Party, while 7% of political tweets posted by Republicans and Republican-leaning independents mentioned the Democratic Party. By comparison, both Democrats and Republicans mentioned their own parties in about 4% of their political tweets.
Note: Here is the methodology used for this analysis.
Samuel Bestvater is a computational social scientist focusing on data science at the Pew Research Center.
Sono Shah is a computational social scientist focusing on data science at the Pew Research Center.
