Who tweets with their location? Understanding the relationship between demographic characteristics and the use of geoservices and geotagging on Twitter

Sloan, Luke ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9458-9332 and Morgan, Jeffrey 2015. Who tweets with their location? Understanding the relationship between demographic characteristics and the use of geoservices and geotagging on Twitter. PLoS ONE 10 (11) , e0142209. 10.1371/journal.pone.0142209

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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.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA76 Computer software
Publisher:	Public Library of Science
ISSN:	1932-6203
Funders:	ESRC, JISC
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	30 March 2016
Date of Acceptance:	19 October 2015
Last Modified:	05 May 2023 16:15
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/80710

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