African Americans are twice as likely as white Americans to use Twitter to share and interact with race-related content, a report from the Pew Research Center finds.

Based on a survey of nearly four thousand adults, the report, Social Media Conversations About Race (35 pages, PDF), found that 68 percent of African-American respondents said that at least some of the posts they see on social networking sites are about race or race relations, compared with 35 percent of white respondents, and that among respondents who said they often or sometimes have conversations about race relations or racial inequality, African Americans (72 percent) were more likely than white Americans (41 percent) to report that most or some of the posts they see on social networking sites are about race. The survey also found that 28 percent of black respondents said most or some of what they post or share is about race or race relations, compared with only 8 percent of whites, while 67 percent of whites said that none of what they post or share pertains to race, compared with 42 percent of African Americans.

The report analyzed 995 million tweets about race posted on Twitter between January 1, 2015, and March 31, 2016, and found that current events often serve as a catalyst for social media conversations about race. Of the tweets analyzed, roughly 60 percent were directly related to key news events, from the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, to the racially motivated shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, to the Grammy performance of rapper Kendrick Lamar. Of the remaining tweets, 40 percent were about broader political themes or personal circumstances, including discrimination (22 percent).

The study also found that from July 2013 through March 2016, the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter was used about twelve million times — 38 percent in supportive or positive reference to the movement, 11 percent critically, and 12 percent neutrally, while an analysis of tweets posted between July 5 and July 17, 2016 — when the deaths of two black men at the hands of police and demonstrations against those shootings were followed by the shootings of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge — found a dramatic rise in the use of the hashtag in tweets criticizing the movement and a drop in the share of tweets supporting the movement.