Who Consents to Sharing Their Tweets With Researchers? A Comparative Analysis of Selection Bias in Linked Survey and Social Media Data

Survey research is entering a new era which centres on its linkage with other forms of digitally generated data such as social media. Many suggest that this can help to address existing weaknesses in self-report surveys such as non-response and measurement bias. However, to link a participant’s survey responses to their social media data, consent from the participant is required. Previous studies have shown that consent to linkage is typically low and selective. This paper expands on the existing literature by comparing Twitter (now X) usage and consent to survey linkage across five national contexts. Testing the effects of several sociodemographic and attitudinal predictors in the US, the UK, France, Germany and Poland, our study finds that overall consent rates vary significantly by age, political attention, privacy concern, trust in social media companies and frequency of political posting on Twitter/X. However, our results also confirm that variable effects differ significantly between nations, suggesting a moderating cultural influence. Within-country variation in the US between 2020 and 2024 is also present, indicating that effects are not necessarily fixed over time. These findings dictate the need for caution when conducting substantive comparisons across countries and time when using social media data.