Tweets can reveal your income level!

Analysing more than 10 million tweets from over 5,000 Twitter users, the researchers found that those who earn more tend to express more fear and anger on Twitter. Those who come across as optimists have a lower mean income, the study said.

Text from those in lower income brackets includes more swear words, whereas those in higher brackets more frequently discuss politics, corporations and the non-profit world, the researchers said. 

“Lower-income users or those of a lower socio-economic status use Twitter more as a communication means among themselves,” said Nikolaos Aletras from University College London.

“High-income people use it more to disseminate news, and they use it more professionally than personally,” Aletras noted.

For this experiment, the researchers started by looking at Twitter users’ self-described occupations. In Britain, a job code system sorts occupation into nine classes. 

Using that hierarchy, the researchers determined average income for each code, then sought a representative sampling from each. 

“It is the largest dataset of its kind for this type of research,” one of the researchers Daniel <g data-gr-id="20">Preotiuc</g>-Pietro from University of Pennsylvania said. The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE.