Key facts about the social media platform Gettr

This analysis from the Pew Research Center provides data from the alternative social media site Gettr. It’s based on an October 2022 Center study that examined Gettr and six other alternative social media sites — BitChute, Gab, Parler, Rumble, Telegram, and Truth Social — using a multi-method approach. Sites were included in the study if they had publicly available posts, were mentioned in the news media, and had at least 500,000 unique visitors as of December 2021.

The survey portion of the study was conducted May 16-22, 2022 among 10,188 American adults. All of those who responded to the survey are members of the Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel recruited by nationwide random sampling of residential addresses. In this way, almost all American adults have a chance of being selected. The survey is weighted to be representative of the US adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, party affiliation, education and other categories. Learn more about the ATP methodology here. Respondents were asked about their knowledge of each of the seven social media sites studied. Those who said they’ve heard of these sites were also asked if they use them and get news from them, what they think of them, and more.

The margin of sampling error for the full sample of 10,188 respondents is plus or minus 1.6 percentage points; the margin of sampling error for the 587 alternative social media consumers is plus or minus 7.0 percentage points.

The audit of alternative social media sites was originally conducted in April 2022. To conduct the analysis, a team of researchers was trained on a set of variables that looked at features of each site like its privacy and moderation policies. . The researchers re-examined each site in August-September 2022 (Gettr was also re-examined in January 2023) and updated the results with any changes.

The account content analysis examines a sample of 200 large accounts on each of the seven sites included in this analysis, for a total of 1,400 accounts examined. Large accounts were sampled from the top 5% of accounts with the most followers on each site. A team of skilled researchers analyzed these 1,400 sampled accounts to determine who runs the account, its political orientation, values, and other characteristics. For more details on how accounts were identified and sampled, read the methodology.

Article content analysis examines the topics discussed and sources cited in 585,470 articles published in June 2022 by the 1,400 sampled accounts (only 1,147 of those accounts published at least once that month). The researchers used a set of unique keywords to identify publications on five distinct topics: abortion; guns, gun control and shootings; the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol; LGBTQ issues; and vaccines. The researchers looked at unique two- and three-word phrases that were commonly used in publications on each topic. The researchers then looked at the unique domains linked to these messages to identify the types of sources these accounts were using.

Here are the questions used in the study, the detailed tables and the methodology.

Pew Research Center is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts, its primary funder. This is the latest report from the Pew Research Center’s ongoing survey of the state of news, information and journalism in the digital age, a research program funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, with the generous support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.