Pew maps Twitter chatter in new type of study, finds 6 types of conversations

NEW YORK, N.Y. – People take to Twitter to talk about everything from politics to breakfast to Justin Bieber in what feels like a chaotic stream of messages. So it may come as a surprise that the conversations on the short messaging service fit into just six distinct patterns.

In a study out this week, the Pew Research Center, working with the Social Media Research Foundation and using a special software tool, analyzed and mapped millions of public tweets, retweets, hashtags and replies that form the backbone of Twitter chatter. The resulting diagrams show how people, brands, news outlets and celebrities interact on Twitter.

When it comes to politics, for example, the report says Twitter’s citizens tend to form two distinct groups that rarely interact with one another, divided along liberal and conservative lines.