Geospatial and Linguistic Analysis of Twitter Behavioral Trends: Examining the Impact of Socioeconomic Development on Social Media Use

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of Twitter (now X), one of the largest social media platforms, aimed at exploring behavioral trends. The objective of this study is to examine geographical and language differences, frequent user patterns, and contributing countries on Twitter. Utilizing a dataset comprising 49,945,240 tweets from 12,845,715 users across 237 countries and 64 languages, we investigate the relationship between human development indices and tweet generation rates. Our findings reveal that countries with higher human development indices tend to generate more tweets, supporting theories of social change and cultural evolution. Additionally, we identify notable linguistic trends, with users predominantly tweeting in native languages, except in countries like India, where English dominates despite linguistic diversity. We also observe that a select group of countries, particularly the United States, accounts for a significant portion of retweets, highlighting retweeting as a widespread behavior in contrast to original tweet creation. These insights contribute to a broader understanding of user behavior on Twitter and provide a nuanced view of the interplay between socioeconomic factors and digital engagement on a global scale.