Statistics shown in this map were collected using the Facebook Marketing API, which gives counts of “Monthly Active Users” for various locations, demographics, and interests. We performed the searches on 5 different days between April and June 2019 to make sure the numbers are not errors, and averaged over the results. For more on our methodology, read our paper.
On the map and surrounding visualizations, we show the percentage of users with a characteristic. For instance, 16% of Facebook users in the municipality of Venezia identify as “living abroad”. We can also compare the urban and rural municipalities, for example, urban municipalities in Roma province on average have 29% college educated Facebook users, compared to 24% in other municipalities of Roma. You can find particular statistics for each municipality using the map, the list of municipalities on the left, or the distribution plots on the lower right. Municipalities in grey did not have enough data to have an estimate.
Remember that these are not official statistics, but what Facebook is able to understand about its users in Italy. Although these data can tell us statistics not available through the official census, for example about how many iOS users there are in an area (a strong signal of wealth).
Do you have questions or comments? Reach us at: @mtizzoni or @yelenamejova
Daniele Rama acknowledges the support of the Lagrange Project funded by Fondazione CRT.