How does Twitter change the way individuals get news? What sorts of thought leaders, journalists and organizations do people follow on the network? How are these Twitter followers different than those on other social networks? And how are people reacting to added components on Twitter, like advertising and promoted tweets?
At a
moment when the
network is poised to make a number of changes, the American Press Institute and
Twitter, in collaboration with research company DB5, have produced a new study that probes the relationship between news use and the Twittersphere.
The study, which involved an online survey of over 4,700 social media users, finds that Twitter users tend to be
heavier news consumers than other social media users. News,
indeed, is one of the first activities that
they engage in on the
network.
Twitter users also tend to be younger than social media users generally. They tend to use the service heavily—the
majority several times
a day—and their use of the network is increasing how much news they consume. The majority Twitter users are also consumers of other types of news media.
While Twitter users follow news generally on the service,
and sometimes do so just as some way of
passing time, they act differently when they are following breaking
news, becoming even more participatory—commenting,
posting and sharing at moments when events
are moving fastest.
All of
these offer signals for how news publishers can make more effective use
of social networks generally and
Twitter in particular.
These are some of the findings of a comprehensive survey of Twitter
users as well as
social media users who aren’t on Twitter, made by the American Press Institute and
Twitter in collaboration with research firm DB5. The study,
conducted online, surveyed
4,713 individuals — 3,713 Twitter users and, for
comparison, a separate sample of 1,000 nationally representative social media
users, together with 469 who weren’t on Twitter.
The findings come at time when Twitter
is increasing its emphasis on
news and creating tweaks that may have an effect on publishers’ strategies. At the
end of this report, API has included a set of
recommendations for publishers based
on the survey findings.
Among the findings from the study:
Nearly 9 in 10 Twitter
users in the study
(86%) say they use Twitter for news, and the overwhelming
majority of those (74%)
do so daily.
Roughly the same number of individuals say they use Twitter to be alerted to breaking
news (40%) as to keep up with the news generally (39%). 3 quarters of Twitter news users
follow individual journalists, writers and commentators (73%) and nearly two thirds follow institutional
accounts (62%). Twitter users also
are very likely to discover new journalists and writers and consequently
follow their work, usually on other platforms beyond Twitter. Fully 94% of Twitter news users
get their news either through scrolling their timelines or browsing
tweets of those they
follow. Other features are used far less often: for instance just 34% of Twitter news users say they get news from trending
topics and 30 minutes use
search. 82% of Twitter
users access the platform on their phones and many access Twitter across multiple devices. A majority
of non-Twitter users (51%) have seen tweets. 45% on TV, 33% from friends, 27% in news articles they read, 22% from going
to twitter.com without signing up, 12% ‑ tone music from
search and 8 in a newspaper.