Is Twitter Disproportionately Popular Among Black Users?

May 6, 2010— -- When Vanity Fair published a story earlier this year on a group of all-American, all-white "tweethearts," the real Twitterati took the magazine to task for ignoring a growing force on Twitter: African-Americans.

They may not make up the majority of people on the popular micro-blogging site, but frequent tweeters say their influence on trending topics and popular memes is undeniable. And, increasingly, researchers are coming up with the data to show it.

In its annual Twitter usage report, Edison Research last week said it appears that African-Americans make up about 24 percent of Twitter users, which is nearly double their representation in the U.S. population.

Edison surveyed about 1,700 people over the phone and found that about 7 percent use Twitter. From that group, they pulled out the people who use Twitter at least once a month and then segmented users by gender, age, education and ethnicity.

Though the sample size is small, Edison researchers said the difference between the percentage of African-Americans who use Twitter and the percentage of African-Americans in the general population (about 13.5 percent, according to census data) is still significant.

"I would characterize it as disproportionately higher," said Tom Webster, vice president of strategy and marketing for Edison.

While he said that the percentage of African-American Twitter users may not necessarily be double the percentage of African-Americans in the U.S., he emphasized that the difference is still outside the margin of error.

Susannah Fox, a researcher with the Pew Internet & American Life Project, said she has observed a similar trend in Pew research.

In a report released last fall, Pew found that while 19 percent of white Internet users said that they use Twitter, 26 percent of online African-Americans said they tweet.

"It's probably a confluence of factors," Fox said. "Young people are the most likely people to be using [Twitter] and people with mobile devices. And in general when we look at the African-American-American Internet user community, they are likely to be younger and more likely to be using mobile devices."