Town Hall Tweets Did Reflect Tweeting Public...Sort of...

Journalists really are different from people, as a latter-day Fitzgerald might have said. Or at least different from Tweeple.

A Boston Globe study of questions Tweeted in advance of President Obama's first Twitter town hall found substantial differences from questions asked by journalists during the president's last few news conferences.

Tweeters were more narrowly focused on issues such as job creation and the federal deficit, asking questions with keywords such as "jobs," "employment," "deficit," and "debt," while journalists spent more time on the political process, asking questions with keywords such as "Congress," "Capitol Hill," "meeting," and "negotiation."

A Nextgov review of the 18 questions asked during the live event found a closer correlation with Tweeter keywords identified by the Globe than journalist keywords.

Four out of 18 questions asked during the event, or 22 percent, mentioned "jobs," significantly higher than the full Tweeter rate of 12 percent.

Only one question, or 6 percent of the total, used a keyword referencing partisan politics, in this case "Republicans." That was the highest ranking category among journalists' questions in the Globe study, at 24 percent, but near the lowest among Tweeters, ranking at 2 percent of questions.

Here are other keywords from the Globe study and how they fared during the Twitter event. Keep in mind that the 18 questions asked during the actual event represent a very small sample size and that a simple keyword search doesn't always convey the meaning of a full question:

• Taxes - 22 percent (town hall questions); 6 percent (all Tweeters); 3 percent (journalists)
• Deficit - 17 percent (town hall questions); 7 percent (all Tweeters); 9 percent (journalists)
• Oil, Energy - 11 percent (town hall questions); 3 percent (all Tweeters); less than 1 percent (journalists)
• Education - 11 percent (town hall questions); 3 percent (all Tweeters); less than 1 percent (journalists)
• Immigration - 6 percent (town hall questions); less than 1 percent (all Tweeters); less than 1 percent (journalists)
• Economic class - 6 percent (town hall questions); 2 percent (all Tweeters); less than 1 percent (journalists)
• Economy - 6 percent (town hall questions); 6 percent (all Tweeters); 5 percent (journalists)