La Plata County residents tweet about beer more than they do about church, according to a 2012 study.

Monica Stephens, a Humboldt State University geographer, studied Twitter messages tagged by location from June 22 to June 29, 2012, that contained the words “beer” or “church.”

Overall, there were slightly more tweets for “church” (17,686 tweets, half of which originated on Sunday) than for “beer” (14,405 tweets, which were more evenly distributed during the week) throughout the continental United States.

There were wide geographic disparities. In the South, more counties were dominated by “church” tweets, while residents of the West and Northeast had beer on their minds.

The website Vox.com republished the map Wednesday while reviewing a new book, The Geography of Beer, that contains the maps. The original map can be found at http://bit.ly/1kQlibW, and contains a county-by-county breakdown.

Herald Staff