Understanding the Demographics of Twitter Users

Alan Mislove; Sune Lehmann Jørgensen; Yong-Yeol Ahn; Jukka-Pekka Onnela; J. Niels Rosenquist

Understanding the Demographics of Twitter Users

Alan Mislove, Sune Lehmann Jørgensen, Yong-Yeol Ahn, Jukka-Pekka Onnela, J. Niels Rosenquist

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Article in proceedings › Research › peer-review

Abstract

Every second, the thoughts and feelings of millions of people across the world are recorded in the form of 140-character tweets using Twitter. However, despite the enormous potential presented by this remarkable data source, we still do not have an understanding of the Twitter population itself: Who are the Twitter users? How representative of the overall population are they? In this paper, we take the first steps towards answering these questions by analyzing data on a set of Twitter users representing over 1% of the U.S. population. We develop techniques that allow us to compare the Twitter population to the U.S. population along three axes (geography, gender, and race/ethnicity), and find that the Twitter population is a highly non-uniform sample of the population.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Proceedings of the Fifth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media
Publisher	AAAI Press
Publication date	2011
Pages	554-557
ISBN (Print)	978-1-57735-505-2
Publication status	Published - 2011
Event	5th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM 2011) - Barcelona, Spain Duration: 17 Jul 2011 → 21 Jul 2011 http://www.icwsm.org/2011/index.php

Conference

Conference	5th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM 2011)
Country/Territory	Spain
City	Barcelona
Period	17/07/2011 → 21/07/2011
Internet address	http://www.icwsm.org/2011/index.php

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@inproceedings{2574907ca96049a795781d1e736d545b,

title = "Understanding the Demographics of Twitter Users",

abstract = "Every second, the thoughts and feelings of millions of people across the world are recorded in the form of 140-character tweets using Twitter. However, despite the enormous potential presented by this remarkable data source, we still do not have an understanding of the Twitter population itself: Who are the Twitter users? How representative of the overall population are they? In this paper, we take the first steps towards answering these questions by analyzing data on a set of Twitter users representing over 1% of the U.S. population. We develop techniques that allow us to compare the Twitter population to the U.S. population along three axes (geography, gender, and race/ethnicity), and find that the Twitter population is a highly non-uniform sample of the population.",

author = "Alan Mislove and J{\o}rgensen, {Sune Lehmann} and Yong-Yeol Ahn and Jukka-Pekka Onnela and Rosenquist, {J. Niels}",

year = "2011",

language = "English",

isbn = "978-1-57735-505-2",

pages = "554--557",

booktitle = "Proceedings of the Fifth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media",

publisher = "AAAI Press",

note = "5th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM 2011) ; Conference date: 17-07-2011 Through 21-07-2011",

url = "http://www.icwsm.org/2011/index.php",

}

Mislove, A, Jørgensen, SL, Ahn, Y-Y, Onnela, J-P & Rosenquist, JN 2011, Understanding the Demographics of Twitter Users. in Proceedings of the Fifth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media. AAAI Press, pp. 554-557, 5th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM 2011), Barcelona, Spain, 17/07/2011. <http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM11/paper/view/2816>

TY - GEN

T1 - Understanding the Demographics of Twitter Users

AU - Mislove, Alan

AU - Jørgensen, Sune Lehmann

AU - Ahn, Yong-Yeol

AU - Onnela, Jukka-Pekka

AU - Rosenquist, J. Niels

PY - 2011

Y1 - 2011

N2 - Every second, the thoughts and feelings of millions of people across the world are recorded in the form of 140-character tweets using Twitter. However, despite the enormous potential presented by this remarkable data source, we still do not have an understanding of the Twitter population itself: Who are the Twitter users? How representative of the overall population are they? In this paper, we take the first steps towards answering these questions by analyzing data on a set of Twitter users representing over 1% of the U.S. population. We develop techniques that allow us to compare the Twitter population to the U.S. population along three axes (geography, gender, and race/ethnicity), and find that the Twitter population is a highly non-uniform sample of the population.

AB - Every second, the thoughts and feelings of millions of people across the world are recorded in the form of 140-character tweets using Twitter. However, despite the enormous potential presented by this remarkable data source, we still do not have an understanding of the Twitter population itself: Who are the Twitter users? How representative of the overall population are they? In this paper, we take the first steps towards answering these questions by analyzing data on a set of Twitter users representing over 1% of the U.S. population. We develop techniques that allow us to compare the Twitter population to the U.S. population along three axes (geography, gender, and race/ethnicity), and find that the Twitter population is a highly non-uniform sample of the population.

M3 - Article in proceedings

SN - 978-1-57735-505-2

SP - 554

EP - 557

BT - Proceedings of the Fifth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media

PB - AAAI Press

T2 - 5th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM 2011)

Y2 - 17 July 2011 through 21 July 2011

ER -

Understanding the Demographics of Twitter Users

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