Pandemics, Protests, and Publics

As an integral component of public discourse, Twitter is among the main data sources for scholarship in this area. However, there much that scholars do not know about basic mechanisms discourse on Twitter, including prevalence various modes communication, types posts users make, engagement those receive, or how these things vary with user demographics and across different topical events. This paper broadens our understanding aspects discourse. We focus first nine months 2020, studying period as a whole giving particular attention to two monumentally important topics time: Black Lives Matter movement COVID-19 pandemic. Leveraging panel 1.6 million accounts matched U.S. voting records, we examine demographics, activity, 800,000 American adults who collectively posted nearly 300 tweets during time span. find notable variation activity engagement, terms modality (e.g., retweets vs. replies), demographic subgroup, context. further while can best be understood collection interconnected publics, neither nor perfectly encapsulates "Twitter public." Rather, publics are fluid, contextual communities which form around salient informed by identities. Together, presents disaggregated, multifaceted description 2020.