Journalists make up the largest category of Twitter’s verified users, according to a report from Triggertrap CEO Haje Jan Kamps published on Medium Monday.

The report, which is based on a sample of 15,000 verified Twitter accounts, shows that journalists make up nearly a quarter (24.6 percent) of the service’s authenticated users. The next-largest category is sports teams and athletes (17.9 percent) followed by actors and entertainers (13.6 percent).

Although journalists make up a significant proportion of the Twitter’s verified userbase, they have relatively few followers (140,000 on average) compared to their higher-profile counterparts in music (more than 1.2 million on average) and acting (more than 400,000 on average).

The report also says journalists and news organizations are the most active group on Twitter, a claim it supports with two metrics: follower ratios and number of tweets. News organizations and journalists tweet frequently about the content they produce and consume, and verified journalists follow more users on average compared to other verified groups in the Twitterverse. From the report:

"When taking a closer look at who is most active on Twitter, things are suddenly making more sense again — It makes sense that media properties (blogs, big news organisations, etc) and journalists tweet a lot about content they’ve created and breaking news."

This might be why Twitter founder Jack Dorsey recently thanked journalists for making the social media platform into a destination for news.
(Poynter.org)