Last week, Pew told us that 30 percent of Americans find news on Facebook — even if they aren’t actively looking for it there.
Now, the research center is out with its second report in a series of studies analyzing news and social media, and this time it’s all about Twitter.
Based on a survey of 5,000 adults, Pew found that eight percent of Americans find news on Twitter, making up about half of Twitter users overall. Though that’s far less than the 30 percent on Facebook, the study showed Twitter news consumers as younger, more mobile and more educated.
While only 64 percent of Facebook news consumers users found content on mobile devices, 85 percent did the same on Twitter. There are also younger people tweeting: 45 percent of Twitter news consumers are in the 18-to-29 age range, compared to 34 percent for Facebook. And only 2 percent were over 65 on Twitter, compared to 7 percent on Facebook.
In addition, 40 percent of Twitter news consumers have at least a Bachelor’s degree, compared to 30 percent on Facebook.
Finally, the report found that most news consumed on Twitter is breaking — rather than opinion pieces — and that the general thoughts of people on Twitter don’t necessary represent the U.S. population as a whole. There also seems to be a tendency to tweet news with no opinion on the subject.
Unlike the first report about Facebook, this study did not determine how many Twitter users “stumble” upon news accidentally on the social network.
Twitter, gearing up for its IPO later this week, has 230 million monthly active users, compared to Facebook’s one billion.
