Representativeness of Social Media in Great Britain: Investigating Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, and Instagram

Abstract

Sociological studies show that Internet access, skills, uses and outcomes vary between different population segments. However, we lack differentiated statistical evidence of the social characteristics of users of distinct social media platforms. We address this issue using a representative survey of Great Britain and investigate the social characteristics of six major social media platforms. We find that age and socioeconomic status are driving forces of several-but not all-of these platforms. The findings suggest that no social media platform is representative of the general population. The unrepresentativeness has major implications for research that uses social media as a data source. Social media data cannot be used to generalize to any population other than themselves.

LinkedIn as a new selection method: Psychometric properties and assessment approach

“…LinkedIn is the largest and fastest‐growing professional social media, with more than 530 million users in over 200 countries in 2017 (http://linkedin.com). LinkedIn usage is not associated with age, gender, or education, but is slightly more popular for high‐income individuals (Blank & Lutz, ), thus making it a potentially relevant platform for recruiting or assessing a variety of applicants. Indeed, according to various surveys, LinkedIn is extensively used in recruitment and selection.…”

Digital inequalities in the age of artificial intelligence and big data

“…Investigating Internet access is particularly important since the Internet is not a monolithic technology and new systems and applications are constantly being developed. For example, while general Internet access might be mostly saturated in rich countries, the same cannot be said about social media access (Blank & Lutz, ; Hargittai, ; Pew, , Pew, ), the mobile Internet (Marler, ; Pearce & Rice, ), and AI‐powered technologies such as smart speakers, smart homes, social robots, and Internet‐of‐things (IoT) applications (Van der Zeeuw, Van Deursen, & Jansen, ). Thus, digital inequalities research in the tradition of the first‐level digital divide is well advised to keep studying inequalities in technology adoption along socioeconomic lines.…”

Forschungsdatenmanagement sozialwissenschaftlicher Umfragedaten

“…Auch TwapperKeeper musste seinen Service schließen, bot jedoch wenig später mit YourTwapperKeeper eine überarbeitete Version an. Diese steht allerdings nicht länger als Webinterface zur Verfügung, sondern muss von den Nutzer/innen auf ihrem eigenen Server installiert werden (Bruns/Liang 2012). Dieses Beispiel verdeutlicht, dass die verfügbaren Datenzugänge Änderungen unterworfen sind, die von den Plattformbetreibern kurzfristig eingeführt werden können.…”