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ITV and Social Media Surveys
The broadcaster ITV uses Twitter ‘polls’ in their reporting.
In their online news articles, ITV include the results from Twitter surveys.
Due to self-selection bias, these surveys are not proper measures of opinion. We cannot use these surveys to infer the views of the public. Broadcasters should avoid citing social media surveys.
The many problems of social media surveys
On social media platforms, users may set up a survey for other accounts to take part.
There is no control on responses other than one vote per account. The same person can respond with many accounts.
There are no guarantees that responses are from the intended population. A person may start a survey asking only certain types of people to vote (e.g. teachers). Everyone with an account can vote.
Voluntary responses cause unknown error. Those voting are those who see the ‘poll’ and animated enough to take part. When people volunteer their responses, we get self-selection bias.
In a 2018 report by British Future and HOPE not Hate, they compared an self-selecting survey to a proper poll. The question was about perceptions of immigration impacts.
