Thread by @Noahpinion

While I'm not sure that polling people about "political correctness" is a good way of assessing America's political divide(s), I definitely think that Twitter is a giant bubble and that non-Twitter Americans are a whole different political animal from Twitter-Americans.

https://twitter.com/emmaogreen/status/1050059545689673728

2/It's just amazing how some controversy will be blowing up on Twitter, and then I ask someone what they think about it, and they haven't even heard of it.

3/Twitter-Americans assume that Twitter IS politics, and that what people are shouting about on this platform = what's happening in the country as a whole.

That assumption is sometimes right (Kavanaugh), but often it's just wrong.

4/There are about 70 million Twitter users in the U.S. (counting bots): statista.com/statistics/274…

There are about 325 million people, and 250 million adults, in the U.S.

This means that Twitter-Americans are at most maybe 1/4 of the total Twitter-capable population.

5/But, here's the thing. We media people - writers, newscasters, entertainers, etc. - are ALL on Twitter.

Twitter is The News. It gives you the most information, fastest. You have to be here.

So, all media people are Twitter-Americans. We're ALL in this bubble.

6/I don't know the implications of this divide, but it seems like it could be big.

If Twitter-Americans aren't a random sample of Americans, it means that the whole American media might have a badly miscalibrated understanding of the preferences, ideas, and mood of the nation.

7/Political scientists need to find out whether or not Twitter/non-Twitter is an important divide. If it is, our media's perspective could be suffering badly.

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