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A method for estimating individual socioeconomic status of Twitter users

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  • He, Yuanmo
  • Tsvetkova, Milena

Abstract

The rise of social media has opened countless opportunities to explore social science questions with new data and methods. However, research on socioeconomic inequality remains constrained by limited individual-level socioeconomic status (SES) measures in digital trace data. Following Bourdieu, we argue that the commercial and entertainment accounts Twitter users follow reflect their economic and cultural capital. Adapting a political science method for inferring political ideology, we use correspondence analysis to estimate the SES of 3,482,652 Twitter users who follow the accounts of 339 brands in the United States. We validate our estimates with data from the Facebook Marketing application programming interface, self-reported job titles on users’ Twitter profiles, and a small survey sample. The results show reasonable correlations with the standard proxies for SES, alongside much weaker or nonsignificant correlations with other demographic variables. The proposed method opens new opportunities for innovative social research on inequality on Twitter and similar online platforms.

Suggested Citation

  • He, Yuanmo & Tsvetkova, Milena, 2023. "A method for estimating individual socioeconomic status of Twitter users," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 118509, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:118509
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Robert de Vries & Aaron Reeves, 2022. "What Does it Mean to be a Cultural Omnivore? Conflicting Visions of Omnivorousness in Empirical Research," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 27(2), pages 292-312, June.
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      Keywords

      socioeconomic status; Twitter; correspondence analysis; measurement; social media; cultural capital;
      All these keywords.

      JEL classification:

      • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics

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