There are multiple components, including a survey, an audit of seven alternative social media sites, and a content analysis of a sample of prominent accounts on these sites and the posts those accounts shared in June 2022. This study explores the landscape of alternative social media sites in early 2022. This is the latest report in Pew Research Center’s ongoing investigation of the state of news, information and journalism in the digital age, a research program funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, with generous support from the John S. Here are the questions used for the report, detailed tables, and the methodology. Researchers then examined the unique domains linked to in these posts to identify the types of sources these accounts were using. Researchers looked at unique two- and three-word phrases that were commonly used in posts on each topic. Researchers used a set of unique keywords to identify posts about five distinct topics – abortion guns, gun control and shootings the Jan.

The content analysis of posts (Chapter 4) examines the topics discussed and sources cited in 585,470 posts published in June 2022 by the 1,400 accounts examined in Chapter 3 (only 1,147 of these accounts posted at least once that month). For more details on how accounts were identified and sampled, see the methodology. A team of trained researchers analyzed these 1,400 sampled accounts to determine who runs the account, their political orientation, values, and other characteristics. Prominent accounts were sampled from the 5% of accounts with the highest number of followers on each site. The account content analysis (Chapter 3) examines a sample of 200 prominent accounts on each of the seven sites included in this analysis, for a total of 1,400 examined accounts. Researchers reexamined each site in August-September 2022 and updated findings with any changes. To conduct the analysis, a team of researchers were trained on a set of variables that examined features of each site like its privacy and moderation policies. The audit of alternative social media sites (Chapter 2) was initially conducted in April 2022. Those who reported having heard of these sites were also asked whether they use the sites and get news there, how they feel about them, and more. Respondents were asked about their familiarity with each of seven social media sites: BitChute, Gab, Gettr, Parler, Rumble, Telegram and Truth Social. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories.

The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. Everyone who completed the survey is a member of Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. The survey portion of this analysis (Chapter 1) was conducted May 16-22, 2022, among 10,188 U.S. Sites were included in the study if they had publicly accessible posts, were mentioned in news media, and had at least 500,000 unique visitors in December 2021. The seven sites studied are: BitChute, Gab, Gettr, Parler, Rumble, Telegram and Truth Social. This study explores alternative social media sites as an emerging part of the news and information landscape using a multi-method approach.

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