Twitterbot Surveys: A Method for Magazine Audience Analysis

The purpose of this study is to explore automated surveys on Twitter as a method for magazines to analyse their audiences and identify best practices for conducting the surveys. To do this I conducted a pilot survey with Twitter users who shared a New Yorker article. I tested the response rate of twelve different question variants looking at question type, type of appeal to respondent used, and whether the tweet was sent as a @reply or @mention. The results showed the survey as a whole had a 23.2% response rate. I found a multiple-choice question, appealing to the respondents’ ego sent as a @reply generated the highest response rate at 40.0%. The results of this pilot survey show the viability for this method to provide magazines with access to their audiences. It suggests this method may provide magazines with timely and efficient access to audience insights.