Your Social Media Reading Habits Reflect Your Personality: Study

A new study by Fractal Analytics and BuzzStream - both digital analytics platforms - establishes the connections between gender, education, political leanings, and preferred publications of Facebook users, adweek.com reported.

It found that across all publications studied, from the BBC and Fox News, to Wired and BuzzFeed, most audiences were primarily men.

Yahoo and BuzzFeed were the only publications preferred by women. The Guardian and Wired had audiences that were overwhelmingly male at 97 percent,

Much like how different sites attract users with different levels of education, people of varying education levels are also attracted to different publications.

For instance, Yahoo readers are 16 percent more likely than the average Facebook user to only hold a high school diploma.

Business Insider, Forbes and BuzzFeed audiences are more likely to hold graduate degrees.

In fact, any user who read the publications studied was more likely to have received higher education than the average Facebook user overall.

Most publications also seem to attract liberal leaning audiences. BuzzFeed, USA Today, and Fox News were the only publications where conservatives outweighed liberals.

Around 20 percent of the audience for every publication, even the most conservative and liberal, identified as moderate, which may be a result of social media reducing political polarisation.