How Twitter Gives a Distorted Reading of the Nation’s Politics

From a Pew Research Center study titled “The Danger of Exaggerating the Political Importance of Social Media”:

. . .this analysis finds that a small share of users produce the vast majority of content related to national politics: 97% of tweets from U.S. adults that mentioned national politics over the study period came from just 10% of users. . .

Tweets from users who strongly disapprove of Trump are especially prominent: This group generates 80% of all tweets from U.S. adults and 72% of tweets mentioning national politics. . .

Prior research by the Center has found that politically engaged Republicans and Democrats in the general public are more likely than less-engaged partisans to hold a range of negative attitudes about the opposing party.