Twitter May Not Be A Good Gauge For Public Opinion

The Pew Research Center has released a study comparing reactions to  8 major political news events on Twitter to national public opinion polls, finding that they vary quite significantly. The Twitter conversation does not tend to be exclusively more liberal or conservative than general public opinion, but it does seem to be quite negative at points. The researchers attribute the differences to Twitter’s limited reach (13% of US internet users) and its users not being an accurate representation of the general public, among other factors. (more…)