Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Twitter Not Good Indicator of Public Opinion

Twitter posts are often cited by journalists when they're looking for reaction to events or politicians, but a new report out yesterday (November 4th) from the Pew Research Center said that it's actually not a very good indicator at all of public opinion.

That's because only 16 percent of all U.S. adults use Twitter, and the makeup of users doesn't reflect the demographic makeup of the nation.

Twitter users tend to be younger, more educated and more affluent when compared to the nation as a whole.

Additionally, Pew found in a report back in March that people were more likely to tweet negatively than positively, so that negative opinions get emphasized that might not accurately reflect what the nation as a whole thinks.

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