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Quantifying Regional Differences in the Length of Twitter Messages

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  • Christian M Alis
  • May T Lim
  • Helen Susannah Moat
  • Daniele Barchiesi
  • Tobias Preis
  • Steven R Bishop

Abstract

The increasing usage of social media for conversations, together with the availability of its data to researchers, provides an opportunity to study human conversations on a large scale. Twitter, which allows its users to post messages of up to a limit of 140 characters, is one such social media. Previous studies of utterances in books, movies and Twitter have shown that most of these utterances, when transcribed, are much shorter than 140 characters. Furthermore, the median length of Twitter messages was found to vary across US states. Here, we investigate whether the length of Twitter messages varies across different regions in the UK. We find that the median message length, depending on grouping, can differ by up to 2 characters.

Suggested Citation

  • Christian M Alis & May T Lim & Helen Susannah Moat & Daniele Barchiesi & Tobias Preis & Steven R Bishop, 2015. "Quantifying Regional Differences in the Length of Twitter Messages," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(4), pages 1-10, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0122278
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0122278
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Robert M. Bond & Christopher J. Fariss & Jason J. Jones & Adam D. I. Kramer & Cameron Marlow & Jaime E. Settle & James H. Fowler, 2012. "A 61-million-person experiment in social influence and political mobilization," Nature, Nature, vol. 489(7415), pages 295-298, September.
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