That outpaces Facebook news consumers by 20 percentage points; 64 per cent of Facebook news consumers use mobile devices for news. The same is true of 40 per cent of all US adults overall, according to the survey.

Twitter news consumers stand out for being younger and more educated than both the population overall and Facebook news consumers, researchers said.

Twitter news consumers also tend to be more educated than the general population and than Facebook news consumers.

A separate Pew Research analysis of conversations on Twitter around major news events reveals three common characteristics: much of what gets posted centres on passing along breaking news; sentiments shift considerably over time; and however passionate, the conversations do not necessarily track with public opinion.

This two-part report is based first on a survey of more than 5,000 US adults (including 736 Twitter users and 3,268 Facebook users) and, second, on an analysis of Twitter conversations surrounding major news events which spanned nearly three years.

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