Twitter is still the social media outlet of choice for Occupy Wall Street, but new analysis into the #OWS tweets has found a surprising gender imbalance in those who’re talking about the protests: Fewer women seem to be doing so, despite Twitter being a female-dominated service overall.
According to analysis by Attention released yesterday, only 30% of tweets mentioning Occupy Wall Street were from female users, even though over 64% of all Twitter users are believed to be female as a result of a 2010 Pew survey. That number is actually up from where it was a month earlier; by mid-September, fewer than 20% of Occupy Wall Street tweets were from women.
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An entirely separate study, carried out by social media monitoring firm Trendrr for AdAge Magazine, sees that number slightly higher; it puts the percentage of female OWS tweets around 38%. But the odd gender discrepancy remains: Is the reason that the women interested in Occupy Wall Street were more likely to get involved with the cause than tweet about it, that the female demographic for Twitter doesn’t have as large a crossover with the OWS demographic as men, or simply that fewer women were interested in tweeting about the subject in general?
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Graeme McMillan is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @Graemem or on Facebook at Facebook/Graeme.McMillan. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.