Socioeconomic Inequality in Social Capital and Communication Behaviour on Twitter

• In Event: Mathematical Sociology Section Flash Talks
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 10. Socioeconomic Inequality in Social Capital and Communication Behaviour on Twitter

Abstract

The pervasiveness of socioeconomic inequality could extend into social media platforms like Twitter. However, relevant empirical evidence remains rare and fragmented. Leveraging a recently developed method for estimating Twitter users’ individual socioeconomic status (SES), this study investigates socioeconomic inequality in social capital and communication behaviours on Twitter. First, this paper establishes that higher SES Twitter users have higher social capital across different measures of social capital, continuing the recent efforts in quantifying the relationship between socioeconomic outcomes and social capital in large digital networks. Second, compared with the existing scattered evidence, this paper provides a more comprehensive picture of the relationship between SES and communication behaviours. The paper demonstrates that higher SES users use more complex and future-oriented language in their tweets. Also, while high and low SES users mostly talk about similar topics, they tend to use different hashtags and have divergent sentiments towards immigration. These findings reveal that socioeconomic inequalities are not only reflected but also potentially reinforced on social media, underscoring the critical roles of social capital and communication behaviours. The study highlights the need for further research to explore the underlying mechanisms and integrate SES as a critical factor in social media research.

Author

• Yuanmo He, London School of Economics and Political Science