From the start of data collection for the 2020 US Census, official and celebrity users tweeted about the importance of everyone being counted in the Census and urged followers to complete the questionnaire (so-called social media campaign.) At the same time, social media posts expressing skepticism about the Census became increasingly common. This study distinguishes between different prototypical Twitter user groups and investigates their possible impact on (online) self-completion rate for the 2020 Census, according to Census Bureau data. Using a network analysis method, Community Detection, and a clustering algorithm, Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), three prototypical user groups were identified: “Official Government Agency,” “Census Advocate,” and “Census Skeptic.” The prototypical Census Skeptic user was motivated by events about which an influential person had tweeted (e.g., “Republicans in Congress signal Census cannot take extra time to count”). This group became the largest one over the study period. The prototypical Census Advocate was motivated more by official tweets and was more active than the prototypical Census Skeptic. The Official Government Agency user group was the smallest of the three, but their messages—primarily promoting completion of the Census—seemed to have been amplified by Census Advocate, especially celebrities and politicians. We found that the daily size of the Census Advocate user group—but not the other two—predicted the 2020 Census online self-completion rate within five days after a tweet was posted. This finding suggests that the Census social media campaign was successful in promoting completion, apparently due to the help of Census Advocate users who encouraged people to fill out the Census and amplified official tweets. This finding demonstrates that a social media campaign can positively affect public behavior regarding an essential national project like the Decennial Census.

中文翻译：

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使用 Twitter 帖子跟踪人口普查在线自我完成情况


从 2020 年美国人口普查数据收集开始，官方和名人用户就在推特上发布了将所有人纳入人口普查的重要性，并敦促关注者完成调查问卷（所谓的社交媒体活动）。与此同时，社交媒体对人口普查表示怀疑的帖子变得越来越普遍。根据人口普查局的数据，这项研究区分了不同的典型 Twitter 用户群体，并调查了它们对 2020 年人口普查（在线）自我完成率的可能影响。使用网络分析方法、社区检测和聚类算法、潜在狄利克雷分配 (LDA)，确定了三个典型用户组：“官方政府机构”、“人口普查倡导者”和“人口普查怀疑论者”。典型的人口普查怀疑论者用户的动机是有影响力的人在推特上发布的事件（例如，“国会中的共和党人表示人口普查不能花费额外的时间来统计”）。该群体成为研究期间最大的群体。典型的人口普查倡导者更多地受到官方推文的激励，并且比典型的人口普查怀疑论者更活跃。官方政府机构用户群体是三个群体中最小的，但他们的信息（主要是促进人口普查的完成）似乎被人口普查倡导者放大了，尤其是名人和政客。我们发现，人口普查倡导者用户组（而非其他两个用户组）的每日规模可以预测推文发布后五天内的 2020 年人口普查在线自我完成率。这一发现表明，人口普查社交媒体活动成功地促进了人口普查的完成，这显然是由于人口普查倡导者用户的帮助，他们鼓励人们填写人口普查并放大了官方推文。 这一发现表明，社交媒体活动可以积极影响公众对十年一次人口普查等重要国家项目的行为。