A new study from the Pew Research Center found that roughly one-third of tweets from American adults are about politics. But while only 8 percent of original tweets were about the users’ political opinions, 40 percent of re-tweets were political, meaning people are much more likely to share someone else’s hot take than they are to post one of their own.
How much do Americans tweet about politics?
Answer: A lot, but most of it isn’t original content.
It should come as no surprise that we love to post political opinions on Twitter. But what’s interesting is how much of that is re-tweeting.
A new study from the Pew Research Center found that roughly one-third of tweets from American adults are about politics. But while only 8 percent of original tweets were about the users’ political opinions, 40 percent of re-tweets were political, meaning people are much more likely to share someone else’s hot take than they are to post one of their own.
Other interesting findings from Pew’s study included that Americans over age 50 produce 78 percent of all political tweets even though they only comprise one-quarter of U.S. users. Data also tended to fall along party lines. Twenty percent of self-identifying Republicans said they mostly follow like-minded Twitter accounts, while 40 percent of Democrats say the same. To be fair, Twitter users tend to vote blue: In a 2020 study, 69 percent of users identified as Democrats.
A new study from the Pew Research Center found that roughly one-third of tweets from American adults are about politics. But while only 8 percent of original tweets were about the users’ political opinions, 40 percent of re-tweets were political, meaning people are much more likely to share someone else’s hot take than they are to post one of their own.
