Monday, April 13, 2015

Twitter opinions vs public opinion

When Internet appeared and people started having access to the computer networks a new era seemed to begin. Now we can communicate with people living on the other side of the world, we can learn, read and watch new things through our computer and even work on Internet.

Internet was founded on October 29, 1969 but it wasn't until late 90's when it expanded and became the tool and phenomenon we know today. After the boom it generated, the network stabilized, expanded worldwide and became accessible for most of the world's population.

We tend to think that everyone is connected to the network and we often forget all those who don't have the opportunity or skills to use it. The digital divide is an economic and social inequality between groups of person that don't have access to information and communication technology within a geographic area, society or community.

But within people who has access to Internet seems to be a general thinking that the big network is going to change our future and even our present.

With the beginning of Internet it was also the beginning of Social Networking services, online platforms to build social relations among people who share activities and interests. The firsts ones were Theglobe.com and Geocities, after appeared Linkedin and MySpace but the now is Facebook the biggest one.

After Facebook, Twitter is the second most used social network. It is a microblogging site where users can share 140-character texts and read what have write other users. Unlike Facebook, where you have to sing up to see what other say (and be friends of them) on Twitter you can read almost everything (not a lot of people change their privacy preferences) and it has become a top source for real-time news sharing.

Social networks like Facebook and Twitter have made possible what we know as citizen journalism and have been a very important part of recent social movements like Arab Spring and 15-M Movement in Spain. These networks facilitated the communication between citizens and move protest from Internet to the streets.

Even after these movements finish these networks have continued to be seen as one of the best options for users to express their opinions, protest against governments and raise their voice. People can comment on online news and share what they want. We observe what is trending topic on Twitter and most of the time we think that what happens on Internet is what happens on real life and that what people writes is what population thinks. But is Internet the new general opinion or only a distortion of it?



A recent study published by PeerReach analyzed the profile of Twitter users and tried to found what they have in common all over the world and in different countries. According to this study, there are 39 millions of Twitter accounts in Spain, a country with 47,27 millions of population, but only 14% of them were considered active accounts (account that tweet frequently).

We also know that 43% of Twitter users are between 10 and 20 years old and 37% of them are between 20 and 29. Another study showed that Spanish users tend to have a more leftist thought that average population.

This highlights the youth of social networks users and also remind us that not everything that is posted on Internet is what people thinks. Trending topics doesn't mean political changes and Internet demands are not always listened.


Sometimes there are issues that make Internet explode. People writes and shares lots of information about it and then, after some days, it all disappears. We live in a quick world, and Internet is also a quick movement. But this doesn't mean that Twitter or Facebook are useless. They are new tools and we are learning to use them. They can be very useful and they can help to change things, but they aren't a magical wand.

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