Linguists and psychologists have been using the content of messages on
Twitter to learn more about our society - in areas such as gender, age
trends and politics. Now, a new study by computer scientists at the
University of Pennsylvania has found that the behaviors of Twitter users
also correlate with their income levels.

The team of researchers, led
by Daniel Preotiuc-Pietro of Penn's Positive Psychology Center,
analyzed more than 10 million posts of 5,191 publicly available Twitter
user profiles. The data was collected in August 2014, and the most
recent 3,000 posts from each person were used.

To calculate income
levels, the researchers used England's job code system to sort the
self-described occupations provided in the profiles and assign a
representative, mean income for each code. That data was then used to
identify links to a user's wealth and the person's tweeting behavior.

The
researchers evaluated how high- and low-income users employ Twitter for
different purposes. Those with high incomes used it more for
disseminating information and had more followers. Those with lower
incomes used it more for social reasons, including sharing links in
their tweets.

As you can see in the first chart, people earning an
average of GBP 45,000 ($69,000 or roughly Rs. 45,00,000) had far more Twitter followers than
people making much less.

Although the reason behind the trend is
unclear, it is also interesting that Twitter users making more money
retweeted more content than Twitter users earning less. And lesser-paid
tweeters included links more often in their postings.

The
researchers also analyzed the content of the messages. Feelings of fear
and anger inferred in tweets of high-income users stood out in
particular.

Other researchers in the project included Svitlana
Volkova of Johns Hopkins University, Yoram Bachrach of Microsoft
Research and Vasileios Lampos and Nikolaos Aletras of University College
London.

© 2015 The Washington Post