The Online Resources Shared on Twitter About the #MeToo Movement: The Pareto Principle

TL;DR

This study analyzes the most influential online resources shared on Twitter about #MeToo, confirming that a small fraction of URLs account for the majority of shared content, illustrating the Pareto principle in social media sharing.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence of the Pareto principle in the context of #MeToo-related Twitter content sharing and identifies key domains and content types involved.

Findings

Most shared domains: twitter.com, nytimes.com, youtube.com

8% of domain names accounted for 80% of shared content

A poll about men's fear to mentor women was highly shared

Abstract

In this paper we examine the most influential resources shared on Twitter about the #MeToo movement. We also examine whether a small proportion of domain names and URLs (e.g. 20%) appear in a large number of tweets (e.g. 80%) that contain #MeToo (known as the 80/20 rule or Pareto principle). R and Python were used to analyze the data. Results demonstrated that the most frequently shared domains were twitter.com (47.20%), nytimes.com (4.42%) and youtube.com (3.69%). The most frequently shared content was a recent poll which indicated "men are afraid to mentor women after the #MeToo movement". In accordance with the Pareto principle, 8% of domain names accounted for 80% of the shared content on Twitter that contained #MeToo. This study provides a base for researchers who are interested in understanding what online resources people rely on when sharing information about online social movements (e.g. #MeToo).