opinion leadership on twitter

Katrin Jungnickel M.A. Folie 1

HOW TO MEASURE OPINION LEADERSHIP ON

TWITTER?

Katrin Jungnickel, TU Ilmenau

14.09.2011

DÜSSELDORF WORKSHOP ON INTERDISCIPLINARY

APPROACHES TO TWITTER ANALYSIS


1. Original Concept: Opinion Leadership and the Two-Step Flow of Communication

2. What is Different Online and on Twitter

3. Implications for Measuring Opinion Leadership Online and on Twitter

Agenda


WHAT ARE OPINION LEADERS?

Two-Step Flow of Communication: Original Concept

Influences stemming from the mass media first reach "opinion leaders" who, in turn,

pass on what they read and hear to those of their every-day associates for whom

they are influential. This hypothesis was called "the two-step flow of communication”.

Katz 1957: 61

Broadly, it appears that influence is related (1) to the personification of certain values

(who one is); (2) to competence (what one knows); and (3) to strategic social

location (whom one knows).

Katz 1957: 73


Personality

• Charismatic authority

• Belief in self-efficacy

• Credibility

• Represent Group Norms

Status

• In all social classes

• Tendency to higher status, especially for virtual opinion leaders

Knowledge

• Expert status

Media use

• High usage of print and online media

• Information seeking behaviour

Network Position

• Central position, large social network, many contacts

Communication Behaviour

• Frequent interpersonal communication

• Public individuation

• Communicative competence

• Often advice or convince others

Engagement/ Involvement

• Political participation

• Social engagement

• High involvement regarding the topic in question (political interest, product involvement)

WHO ARE THE OPINION LEADERS?

Characteristics of Opinion Leaders

Who

one is

What

one

knows

Whom

one

knows


Transmission Persuasion

Diffusion Research Public Opinion Research

two-step-flow: opinion leaders as

intermediaries between professional

communicators (media, politicians,

organisations) and the public

Mediation

opinion leaders as influencers on public

opinion, attitudes and behaviour

Moderation

THE ROLE OF OPINION LEADERS IN COMMUNICATION

Main Functions: Transmission and Persuasion

Troldahl 1966: one-step flow of

information and two-step flow of

persuasion

Robinson 1976: multi-step flow, opinion

sharers receive and give opinions


• Pew Internet Research 2010 (survey in the US)

o 71% of onliners receive news from other people via Mail, Twitter, Instant Messager etc.

o 30% of onliners receive news via social networking, 17% only through contact with

friends

o 6% of onliners receive news via Twitter

TRANSMISSION ONLINE

Return to the Basic Concept – Revival of the Two-Step Flow?

Development of New Gatekeepers

(Jürgens, Jungherr & Schön 2011) or

Gatewatchers (Bruns 2005)


• Two groups of Twitter users (Wu et al. 2011)

o Intermediaries receive news/information mostly directly from the media

have more followers

are more active

are more likely to be elite users (celebrities, media, bloggers, organisations)

o Other users receive news/information mostly from intermediaries

• What happens to media tweets? (An et al. 2011)

o in average, every tweet from the media gets retweeted 15 times

o media can increase their audience by 28% via retweets

o 80% of users follow up to 10 media but come into contact with up to 27 media via

retweets

o 46% of media tweets reach users via intermediaries (Wu et al. 2011)

TRANSMISSION ON TWITTER

Indicators for a Two-Step-Flow on Twitter


• Network Homogeneity (Schenk 1994)

o political talk often happens in the primary group (close family friends)

o strong congruence of opinions in the network

o opinion leaders represent group norms

• Framing in Online Social Networks (Maireder 2011)

o intermediaries provide patterns and frames for the interpretation of media content

o intermediation frames are persuasive

PERSUASION

• Heterogeneity of opinions on Twitter?

o 18% of left wings and 57% of right wings get into contact with dissonant political

opinions via retweets (An et al. 2011)

o retweet-network is divided in two political camps, mention network isn‘t (Conover et

al. 2011)


Increased network size

Connection with people outside the

primary and secondary group

influence of OLs potentially increases

- as intermediaries, but also as moderators?

probability to receive different opinions/

information increases

information overload → information remains

unnoticed

WHAT IS DIFFERENT ONLINE AND ON TWITTER?


Information

spreading

via retweets

audience not clearly defined

Lowest common denominator effect (Marwick & Boyd

2011)?

Influence of opinion leaders dependent on

the activity of their network

(Influence Passivity Algorithm, Romero et

al. 2011)

original source can diffuse unchanged

information obtained is possibly more reliable



Communicators and intermediaries use the same channel

Mixture of communicators and

opinion leaders

Mixture of classic & virtual opinion leaders, opinion leader media &

institutions



• Virtual Opinion Leaders (Eisenstein 1994)

o celebrities and politicians

o influence especially high on people with less social contacts

o characteristics: credibility, authority, charisma

o Similar influence of opinion leader media and institutions

VIRTUAL OPINION LEADERS

Elite Users and Micro Celebrities as New Virtual Opinion Leaders

• Virtual Opinion Leaders on Online Social Networks

o Elite Users on Twitter (Wu et al. 2011)

bloggers, media, organisations, celebrities

20.000 elite users are responsible for 50% of the attention on Twitter

journalists often have more followers than the media they work for (An et al. 2011)

o Micro Celebrities (Pugh 2010, qualitative Facebook Study)

become online celebrities due to their large network


• Opinion leaders online and on Twitter are not (only) individuals.

MIXTURE OF COMMUNICATORS ONLINE

Implications for the Opinion Leadership Concept

MEDIA

PARTIES

COMPANIES /

BRANDS

ORGANISATIONS

INSTITUTIONS BLOGS


Method Description

Positional Office holders, politicians

Reputational Nominated by others

Self-designating Opinion leadership scales (e.g. Lazarsfeld,

Berelson & Gaudet 1944, King & Summers

1970, Noelle-Neumann 1983, Childers 1986)

Sociometric By retracing communication paths in a network

Observation

Key informant

approach

Nominated by special informants

List of methods by Weimann et al. 2007

METHODS OF MEASURING OPINION LEADERSHIP


Method Description






Sociometric By retracing communication paths in a network

Observation

Key informant

approach



METHODS OF MEASURING OPINION LEADERSHIP

Methods Applied to Research on Twitter

Followers, Re-

Tweets, Re-

Posts,

Mentions


• Criteria for Opinion Leadership on Twitter

o amount of followers

o page rank

o amount of retweets and mentions (Cha et al. 2010, Kwak et al. 2010)

o amount of reposts (Bakshy et al. 2011)

METHODS OF MEASURING OPINION LEADERSHIP ON TWITTER

Concepts of Opinion Leadership on Twitter

1. Problems of technical analysis (automatic re-tweets, changing

tweets, etc.)

2. Focus on transmission, negligence of persuasion

3. Which characteristics make an individual (or a brand/ media

organisation/ instititution) influential on Twitter – not only in

terms of reach, but in terms of impact?


Method Description






Sociometric By retracing communication paths in a

network

Observation

Key informant

approach



HOW TO MEASURE OPINION LEADERSHIP ON TWITTER?

Extension of Twitter Network and Content Analysis

Elements of

discourse (@-

Replies) as

indicators

Detailed content

analysis of

discussions, link

destinations and

their persuasive

potential


Method Description







network

Observation

Key informant

approach




Self Designating Approach Difficult

Not as useful as

we deal with OL

who are not

necessarily

individuals →

scales do not

really fit


Method Description







network

Observation

Key informant

approach




Reputational Approach More Promising

Could be a useful

approach to

identify broad

criteria that make

opinion leaders

influential


• Ask Twitterers to

o name their most important sources on Twitter

o reveal their reasons to follow certain sources and their

strategies to select their sources

o name sources (=Twitter accounts) which they retweet a

lot

o characterize their sources (credibility, network position

etc.)

• Content Analysis of participant‘s Twitter accounts

o followees, followers, Twitter activity


Mixed Method Approach

How do we get a

good sample of

Twitterers?

→ track down

followers of Elite

Users?

→ focus on

certain topics?


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References

opinion leadership on twitter

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