Opinion leadership on twitter
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Transcript of 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
Katrin Jungnickel M.A. Folie 2
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
Katrin Jungnickel M.A. Folie 3
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
Katrin Jungnickel M.A. Folie 4
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
Katrin Jungnickel M.A. Folie 5
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
Katrin Jungnickel M.A. Folie 6
• 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)
Katrin Jungnickel M.A. Folie 7
• 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
Katrin Jungnickel M.A. Folie 8
• 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)
Katrin Jungnickel M.A. Folie 9
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?
Katrin Jungnickel M.A. Folie 10
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
WHAT IS DIFFERENT ONLINE AND ON TWITTER?
Katrin Jungnickel M.A. Folie 11
Communicators and intermediaries use the same channel
Mixture of communicators and
opinion leaders
Mixture of classic & virtual opinion leaders, opinion leader media &
institutions
WHAT IS DIFFERENT ONLINE AND ON TWITTER?
Katrin Jungnickel M.A. Folie 12
• 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
Katrin Jungnickel M.A. Folie 13
• 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
Katrin Jungnickel M.A. Folie 14
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
Katrin Jungnickel M.A. Folie 15
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
Methods Applied to Research on Twitter
Followers, Re-
Tweets, Re-
Posts,
Mentions
Katrin Jungnickel M.A. Folie 16
• 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?
Katrin Jungnickel M.A. Folie 17
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
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
Katrin Jungnickel M.A. Folie 18
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
HOW TO MEASURE OPINION LEADERSHIP ON TWITTER?
Self Designating Approach Difficult
Not as useful as
we deal with OL
who are not
necessarily
individuals →
scales do not
really fit
Katrin Jungnickel M.A. Folie 19
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
HOW TO MEASURE OPINION LEADERSHIP ON TWITTER?
Reputational Approach More Promising
Could be a useful
approach to
identify broad
criteria that make
opinion leaders
influential
Katrin Jungnickel M.A. Folie 20
• 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
HOW TO MEASURE OPINION LEADERSHIP ON TWITTER?
Mixed Method Approach
How do we get a
good sample of
Twitterers?
→ track down
followers of Elite
Users?
→ focus on
certain topics?
Katrin Jungnickel M.A. Folie 21
An, J., Cha, M., Gummadi, K., & Crowcroft, J. (2011). Media landscape in Twitter: A world of new conventions and political diversity. Association for the Advancement of Artificial
Intelligence. Retrieved from http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~jac22/out/twitter-diverse.pdf.
Bakshy, E., Hofman, J. M., Mason, W. A., & Watts, D. J. (2011). Everyone’s an Influencer: Quantifying Influence on Twitter. WSDM '11, Hong Kong, China. Retrieved from
http://research.yahoo.com/files/wsdm333w-bakshy.pdf.
Bruns, A. (2005). Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
Cha, M., Haddadi, H., Benevenuto, F., & Gummadi, K. P. (2010). Measuring User Influence in Twitter: The Million Follower Fallacy. Proc. International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and
Social Media (ICWSM), May 2010. Retrieved from http://an.kaist.ac.kr/~mycha/docs/icwsm2010_cha.pdf.
Childers, J. L. (1986). Assessment of the psychometric properties of an opinion leadership scale. Journal of Marketing Research, 184-188.
Conover, M.D., Ratkiewicz, J., Francisco, M., Goncalves, B., Flammini, A., Menczer, F. (2011). Political Polarization on Twitter. Proceedings of the Fifth International AAAI Conference on
Weblogs and Social Media. Retrieved from: http://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM11/paper/view/ 2847/3275.
Eisenstein, C. (1994). Meinungsbildung in der Mediengesellschaft: Eine Analyse zum Multi -Step Flow of Communication. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.
Jürgens, P., Jungherr, A. ,& Schön, H. (2011). Small Worlds with a Difference: New Gatekeepers and the Filtering of Political Information on Twitter. WebSci ’11, June 14-17, 2011,
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King, C., & Summers, J. (1970). Overlap of opinion leadership across consumer product categories. Journal of Marketing Research, 7, 43-51.
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Lazarsfeld, P., Berelson, B., & Gaudet, H. (1944). The People's Choice. How the Voter Makes up his Mind in a Presidential Campaign. New York: Columbia University Press.
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Proc. 20th International World Wide Web Conference. Retrieved from http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/www11-hashtags.pdf.
Robinson, J. P. (1976). Interpersonal influence in election campaigns: Two step-flow hypotheses. Public Opinion Quarterly, 40, 304-320.
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References