What Twitter users asked the president

At a town hall Tuesday, President Obama answered a few of the thousands of questions posed by Twitter users in the past week. Below, the percent of recent questions asked by Twitter users, and White House journalists, that mention selected topics.

Note: The current samples of tweets were taken before the event started.

Percent of questions
that mentioned...
Twitter users
13,000 recent
#askobama tweets
Journalists
Past two weeks of
White House briefings
Jobs
job, employment
12
3
Deficit
deficit, debt, budget, default
7
9
Taxes
tax
6
3
Economy
economy, economic
6
5
War
war, iraq, afghanistan, troops
5
7
Parties
republican, gop, democrat
4
9
Election
election, campaign, 2012
3
5
Oil, energy
gas, oil, drill, energy
3
Education
education, school, teach
3
Congress, negotiation
congress, capitol hill, meeting, negotiation
2
24
Terrorism
terror, security, bin laden
2
Economic class
middle class, wealthy, poor
2
Marijuana
marijuana, cannabis, pot
Entitlements
social security, medicare, medicaid
Immigration
immigration, aliens, immigration, border
Student loans
student loans, college, tuition
Health care
health care, healthcare, hospitals
Libya
libya
2
Israelis / Palestinians
israel, palestine
Guns
gun, 2nd amendment
2
Housing
housing, mortgage
Millionaires
millionaire, billionaire, corporate jet
2
Partisanship
partisan
Gay, lesbian
gay, lgbt, lesbian

Tom Giratikanon / Globe Staff

Source: Tweets gathered by MassRelevance since 2 p.m. on Monday. Transcripts from press briefings and gaggles gathered from whitehouse.gov.

Methodology: Questions were converted to lowercase before searching for phrases. Partial matches counted: "employment" matched both "employment" and "unemployment", "job" matched both "job" and "jobs", etc. Press questions that began with "--" in the transcript (indicating a continuation of a previous question), did not have a question mark, or were under 50 characters (generally follow-up questions) were discarded.