Sociology of Twitter/X
Trends, Challenges, and Future Research Directions
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2295614 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Dhiraj Murthy (0000-0001-9734-1124, School of Journalism and Media, and Department of Sociology, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA; email: [email protected]) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 169-190 |
| Publication date | 2024-08-12 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Annual Review of Sociology (BOOK_SERIES) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0360-0572 • E-ISSN: 1545-2115 |
| Publisher | Annual Reviews (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1146/annurev-soc-031021-035658 |
| OpenAlex | W4398221153 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 18 |
| References cited | 82 |
This article provides a sociology of Twitter (now known as X) and charts the development of the study of the platform and its data in sociological venues through an analysis of 1,644 articles published since 2009. This review helps readers understand developments in the field and provides a road map for advancing future Twitter-related sociological research. The works cited in this review advance sociological research on a variety of subfields, including but not limited to race, social movements, segregation, politics, violence, and stratification. After a brief introduction of definitions as well as methodological approaches used to study the platform (computational, qualitative, and mixed), I explore how Twitter has been used in sociological research. Furthermore, using social movements and activism as a case study, I highlight what the platform's usage and communication reveal about the social world. I conclude with a road map for advancing Twitter-related sociological research in the current atmosphere in which Twitter has been renamed X. Ultimately, a sociology of Twitter does not need to be tethered to the platform per se, as it also provides a framework for understanding new platforms if they become home for what people previously posted to Twitter/X
Data science · Media studies · Regional science · Social science · Sociology · Computer Science · Digital Marketing and Social Media · Impact of Technology on Adolescents · Social Media and Politics
From Conflict to Cohesion
Polarized or Fragmented? How Social Identities Relate to Political Cleavages and Media Use Across European Countries
Detecting health-related tweets for developing healthcare systems
The Role of Changes on Twitter in Youth Political Participation
Climate communication in the stormy transition of Twitter to X
Othering discourse online in the UK during a time of crisis
From (almost) open to heavily restricted data access – The development of the Twitter/X developer policies
The structural origins of the conservative online media niche, US Twitter 2022
Queer survivalscapes under platformisation
New forms of artivism in relation to contemporary societies. Tuty Moreno Campos’s soft artivism
Researching Russia with Digital Trace Data
Elite Polarisation on Twitter/X
States of Abortion Talk
Uso de mídias sociais para detecção de rumores em saúde pública
Computational Text Analysis for Building and Testing Social Theory
Share @WHO? Authority and Resonance in IO Social Media Communication
Cassandra from the far right
Black Twitter as "Master" Social Architects
Who Tweets? Deriving the Demographic Characteristics of Age, Occupation and Social Class from Twitter User Meta-Data
Modulating moderation
Twitter-generated Moral Panic and Its Effect on Pretrial Incarceration/ Bail
An empirical study of emoji usage on Twitter in linguistic and national contexts
Understanding a digital movement of opinion
Let’s (re)tweet about racism and sexism
Riots and Twitter
Bigger sociological imaginations
Social media, protest, & outrage communication in Ethiopia
Echo Chamber or Public Sphere? Predicting Political Orientation and Measuring Political Homophily in Twitter Using Big Data
Social Media and the Decision to Participate in Political Protest
Black Twitter? Racial Hashtags, Networks and Contagion
The #Occupy Movement
The Hashtag in Digital Activism
Drag Them
Twitter use in election campaigns
Fighting for Their Future
Why We Broke Up with X (And You Should Too)
Privacy protection and self-disclosure across societies
CancelCulture
Seems stupid until you try it
The changing public sphere on Twitter
From “thank god for helping this person” to “libtards really jumped the shark”
Gang violence on the digital street
Digital social research, social media and the sociological imagination
Digital Pride on the Streets of the Internet
Urban Social Media Demographics
Birds of a Feather Tweet Together
Unless you go online you are on your own
Wrap our arms around them here in Ireland’
What gets lost in Twitter ‘cancel culture’ hashtags? Calling out racists reveals some limitations of social justice campaigns
The Digital Divide Among Twitter Users and Its Implications for Social Research
Make Tweets Great Again
BlackLivesMatter
The disinformation order
Social media dissidence and activist resistance in Zimbabwe
All Lives Matter, but so Does Race
Geotagged US Tweets as Predictors of County-Level Health Outcomes, 2015–2016
Variations in the Temporal Structure of Sociability across American Cities
The 2011 England Riots in Recent Historical Perspective
Masculinity, cancel culture and woke capitalism
Television and Black Twitter in South Africa
Tweet or be sacked
Triple Disadvantage
Policy-making by tweets
Critical Questions for Big Data
After the crisis? Big Data and the methodological challenges of empirical sociology
Online Conspiracy Groups
Imagining Twitter as an Imagined Community
Movement social learning on Twitter
Encountering #Feminism on Twitter
Mobilizing the Masses
The Social Integration of American Cities
Using Twitter for Demographic and Social Science Research
Towards a Sociological Understanding of Social Media
Digital Ethnography
American Religion in the Era of Increasing Polarization
Conspiracies beyond Fake News. Produsing Reinformation on Presidential Elections in the Transnational Hybrid Media System
Do Anti-Immigrant Laws Shape Public Sentiment? A Study of Arizona's SB 1070 Using Twitter Data
Insiders and Outsiders
Durkheim's Division of Labor in Society
Ferguson and the death of Michael Brown on Twitter
| Unique citing works | 18 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 18 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 17 |