Opinion leadership in parliamentary Twitter networks: A matter of layers of interaction?

Abstract

This article seeks to test whether Twitter is contributing to the appearance of new opinion leaders or empowering already visible political leaders. The study is based on a data set spanning from January 1, 2013 to March 31, 2014 that covers all relationships (4,516), retweets (6,045) and mentions (19,507) of Catalan parliamentarians. The data sustains that having a parliamentarian position increases the probability of being an opinion leader of the following–follower and mention networks, but not so much of the retweet network. Although Twitter parliamentary networks reproduce leaderships “as usual,” the most central opinion leaders in the retweet network are not official party leaders. Twitter activity, not official leadership, is a stronger predictor of centrality for both retweets and mentions received.