Tweeting the Mind and Instagramming the Heart: Exploring Differentiated Content Sharing on Social Media

Understanding the usage of multiple Online Social Networks (OSNs) is of significant research interest as it helps in identifying the distinguishing traits of each social media platform that contribute to its continued existence. A comparison between two OSNs is particularly useful when it is done on the representative set of users holding active accounts on both the platforms. In this research, we collected a set of users holding accounts on both Twitter and Instagram. An extensive textual and visual analysis on the media content posted by these users reveals that these platforms are indeed perceived differently at a fundamental level with Instagram engaging more of the users’ heart and Twitter capturing more of their mind. These differences get reflected in the linguistic, topical and visual aspects of the user posts.