At the journal Epidemiology, John Cunningham published a proof-of-concept article aimed to show that Twitter is a useful and viable method of data collection.
His data captured the incidences of the words “wine,” “beer,” and “vodka” over the course of a week. The figure shows that people are tweeting about these spirits more-or-less in unison, that they tend to do so increasingly towards the end of each day, and that wine and beer are weekday favorites, but vodka comes out ahead on the weekends, especially as the night wears on:
So, I thought that was kinda neat! Now we know something about when and what people are (tweeting about) drinking and also that Twitter is good for something other than sending people messages that everyone else can see, but no one else can understand.
*Via Neuroskeptic, from whom I borrowed this great title.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 18
decius — August 12, 2012
The peaks in unison aren't meaningful by themselves: what's the baseline (total number of tweets) and how does that trend?
Anna — August 12, 2012
That's really interesting. I would have thought more people would opt for vodka on weekdays, because the chance of a hangover is smaller, and vodka hangovers are less severe than ones from beer and wine. I've also heard that the smell of vodka lingers less than beer or wine the next day.
Of course, the problem is that I assume everyone is consuming a lot of alcohol, whereas they might just be taking in a glass of wine or beer with meals. I suppose vodka is more of a party drink. If one's Twitter account is public, then it may be more socially acceptable and professionally savvy to tweet about beer or wine rather than vodka during a weeknight.
Afernandez — August 12, 2012
I was wondering how do analysts extract this information from Twitter. Any idea?
Константин Ольховиков — August 12, 2012
Sometimes I wonder what might you know about vodka outside Russia (the same for Ukraine, Belorussia and Poland)?
Константин Ольховиков — August 12, 2012
You know nothing about vodka in US. Just visit Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia, Poland. The true science has nothing in common with prejudice.
Shannon Tyler Cunningham — August 12, 2012
Evidence that Monday sucks. :)
Andrew S — August 12, 2012
I'm intrigued by the bump wine has that the others do not have. It seems every day, a bit before noon (if 4 bars = 24 hours and 1 bar = 6 hours). I wonder why that is.
Guest — August 13, 2012
Are the tweets controlled for only users from a particular timezone? If they aren't, there are more possible explanations for the spikes.
Neuroskeptic — August 13, 2012
Thanks for the link.
Neuroskeptic — August 13, 2012
Just to clarify, the beer/wine/vodka image wasn't actually from the Cunningham paper. His pic had beer, wine, and cigarettes & smoking; that inspired me to do the vodka searches.
Different timezones preferring different drinks is a possibility, although I find it implausible that it could account for all the differences.
Gilbert Pinfold — August 15, 2012
What's after 'vodka'? OK. I don't want to know.