New research suggests that the words people use on social media could be used to predict their income and socioeconomic status.
An international team of scientists found that a person's behavior on Twitter can reveal age and gender, and that these are tied to income. Those who earn more tend to express more fear and anger on Twitter. Perceived optimists have a lower mean income. Text from those in lower income brackets includes more swear words, whereas those in higher brackets more frequently discuss politics, corporations and the nonprofit world.
"Lower-income users or those of a lower socioeconomic status use Twitter more as a communication means among themselves," researcher Nikolaos Aletras of University College London said in a statement. "High-income people use it more to disseminate news, and they use it more professionally than personally."
For the study, researchers collected and analyzed more than 10 million tweets from 5,191 users. The scientists looked at participants' social media posts, often full of intimate details despite the lack of privacy these outlets afford.
For this experiment, the researchers started by looking at Twitter users' self-described occupations.
"It's the largest dataset of its kind for this type of research," Daniel Preotiuc-Pietro, who led the research, said in a statement. "The dataset enabled us to do something no one has really done before."
Strong correlations like these, between what the researchers describe as online expression and offline demographics -- for example, occupation grouping or income level -- also proved intriguing.
"This work attempts to highlight some of the potential causal factors in these relationships," researcher Vasileios Lampos of the University College London said in a statement.
The findings are detailed in the journal PLOS ONE.
