Pew Study of U.S. Political Tweeters Finds Mostly Adult Democrats Who Disapprove Donald Trump
A Pew study published last October 2019 helped analyze the type of tweeters who indicate interests in U.S. national politics. Twitter presumably became a likely choice since U.S. president Donald Trump is known to be an active user; posting and reposting tweets mainly for political purposes.
Pew analyzed the answers of 2,427 respondents using a public Twitter account. Collectively, respondents had generated more than 1.1 million tweets from June 10 2018 through June 09, 2019. In classifying the participants as posting tweets related to national politics, Pew Center utilized guided machine learning model.
The most notable of the findings analyzed by the Pew Research is that of the political tweets mentioning Trump, 55 percent of all American adults using Twitter, have indicated strong disapproval of the U.S president. This information is consitent with Pew’s analysis that about 67% of political tweeters are either identified as Democrats or have Democratic leaning. Only 28% identify as Republicans or inclined to support the Republican Party. .
The Pew analysis qualifies a tweet as one that pertains to national politics if mentioning or expressing support for or opposition against national politicians, political parties, elected officials, political institutions, ideological groups or even specific political behaviors such as voting. Excluded from the definition of political content are mainly tweets about state or local politics.
A general discussion of national interest is regarded as political in nature only if the tweet makes mention of a national political figure, political party, political institution or behavior of a political organization. Of those general discussions, the Pew research found out that the most prolific political tweeters are those with intense views on Donald Trump.
Basically, the Pew study defines political tweeters those who have tweeted at least five (5) times during the study period, in which a discussion about national politics was made in at least with two (2) of those five (5) tweets.
The study defines a prolific political tweeter as one who has posted political content at least ten (10) times, and who have discussed national politics in at least 25% of their posts.