Research Article: “Who Tweets with Their Location? Understanding the Relationship between Demographic Characteristics and the Use of Geoservices and Geotagging on Twitter”
The following article was published on the PLOS One website late last week.
Title
Authors
Luke Sloan
University of Cardiff
Jeffery Morgan
University of Cardiff
Source
PLoS ONE 10(11): e0142209
November 6, 2015
Abstract
In this paper we take advantage of recent developments in identifying the demographic characteristics of Twitter users to explore the demographic differences between those who do and do not enable location services and those who do and do not geotag their tweets. We discuss the collation and processing of two datasets—one focusing on enabling geoservices and the other on tweet geotagging. We then investigate how opting in to either of these behaviours is associated with gender, age, class, the language in which tweets are written and the language in which users interact with the Twitter user interface.
We find statistically significant differences for both behaviours for all demographic characteristics, although the magnitude of association differs substantially by factor. We conclude that there are significant demographic variations between those who opt in to geoservices and those who geotag their tweets.
Not withstanding the limitations of the data, we suggest that Twitter users who publish geographical information are not representative of the wider Twitter population.
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About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.