DOI

Today, a range of research approaches is used to define the so-called influencers in discussions in social media, and one can trace both conceptual and methodological differences in how influencers are defined and tracked. We distinguish between ‘marketing’ and ‘deliberative’ conceptualization of influencers and between metrics based on absolute figures and those from social network analytics; combining them leads to better understanding of user activity and connectivity measures in defining influential users. We add to the existing research by asking whether user activity necessarily leads to better connectivity and by what metrics in online ad hoc discussions, and try to compare the structure of influencers. To do this, we use comparable outbursts of discussions on inter-ethnic conflicts related to immigration. We collect Twitter data on violent conflicts between host and re-settled groups in Russia and Germany and look at top20 user lists by eight parameters of activity and connectivity to assess the structure of influencers in terms of pro/contra-migrant cleavages and institutional belonging. Our results show that, in both discussions, the number of users involved matters most for becoming an influencer by betweenness and pagerank centralities. Also, contrary to expectations, Russian top users all in all are, in general, more neutral, while Germans are more divided, but in both countries pro-migrant media oppose anti-migrant informal leaders.

Язык оригиналаанглийский
Название основной публикацииSocial Informatics - 9th International Conference, SocInfo 2017, Proceedings
РедакторыGiovanni Luca Ciampaglia, Taha Yasseri, Afra Mashhadi
ИздательSpringer Nature
Страницы360-376
Число страниц17
ISBN (печатное издание)9783319672168
DOI
СостояниеОпубликовано - 2017
Событие9th International Conference on Social Informatics, SocInfo 2017 - Oxford, Великобритания
Продолжительность: 13 сен 201715 сен 2017

Серия публикаций

НазваниеLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Том10539 LNCS
ISSN (печатное издание)0302-9743
ISSN (электронное издание)1611-3349

конференция

конференция9th International Conference on Social Informatics, SocInfo 2017
Страна/TерриторияВеликобритания
ГородOxford
Период13/09/1715/09/17

    Предметные области Scopus

  • Теоретические компьютерные науки
  • Компьютерные науки (все)

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