Zipf's Law and #econtwitter

Michael Cameron

Working Papers in Economics from University of Waikato

Abstract: This letter investigates the distribution of Twitter followers for the top 521 economists and for the top 5000 Twitter users, testing whether each distribution follows a power law. We find strong evidence for a power law, both for economists and for Twitter more generally. However, the inequality in the distribution of followers is greater among economists, which has potentially negative implications for the quality of economic debate on Twitter.

Keywords: Social media; Zipf's Law; Power Law; Pareto distribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D85 L86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 8 pages
Date: 2022-03-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme, nep-pay and nep-sog
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wai:econwp:22/08

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