Who uses social media?


The two most commonly used forms of social media platform in most western countries are Facebook and Twitter, and they both differ significantly in terms of who uses them and how they use them. Facebook is by far the larger of the two platforms in terms of market penetration, counting nearly 2 billion MAUs (monthly active users) as of March 2017.1


In other words, as a platform it represents the average western, particularly Anglosphere population, particularly well.


Twitter is slightly smaller than Facebook in terms of market penetration (just 24% of the general public in the United States use it compared to Facebook’s 60%) but these figures obscure the fact a disproportionate number of journalists use the platform and correspondingly amplify its influence beyond its relatively smaller level of market penetration. This particular fact is crucial when discussing the influence of social media on crisis comms and why many discussions around this topic tend tend to focus more on the influence on Twitter than on Facebook.


It’s an ideal platform for tagging particular primary sources to keep up to date with occurrences in their vicinity – a good portion of journalistic sources in the recent Syrian conflict originate from Twitter and their blow-by-blow account of the dozens of skirmishes between a myriad of different groups tends to be far more up-to-date than traditional journalistic channels, given the constantly changing reality on the ground.


However, the level of market penetration among the general public is comparatively far lower. For example, just 24% of US adults use Twitter, compared to over 60% using Facebook2


. To some degree its


disproportionate level of influence over discourse during and aſter major incidents can be attributed to both the relatively high level of presence of journalists and the tendency of shortform media to be both readily quotable and antagonistic.


Moreover, according to research from MarketingLand, just 2% of followers of verified Twitter accounts will view their tweets.3


So while Twitter is, as we shall see, an important shaper of the discourse surrounding


events, it is perhaps easy to overestimate the influence of your own social media channels as an organization, government department or business.


1 Facebook closes in on two billion users, The Daily Telegraph, 30th April 2017. 2 Demographics of Key Social Networking Platforms, Pew Research Center, 2016.


3 Just Like Facebook, Twitter’s New Impression Stats Suggest Few Followers See What’s Tweeted, Marketing Land, 2014. Page 4 | Crisis Comms & Social Media


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